


The Man On The Ledge

by yourpenmate



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Amnesia, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Drama & Romance, F/M, Friendship, Hydra (Marvel), Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Civil War (Marvel), R&R, Romance, Romantic Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-07-29 17:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 37,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7693177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourpenmate/pseuds/yourpenmate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was lost and torn whether he was the cold-blooded assassin they call the Winter Soldier or the headstrong James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes from Brooklyn. Helpless, afraid and alone, he thought there could only be one solution to end it all but then she found him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Winter Soldier/James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes or any characters from the MCU**

* * *

_To Z, who introduced a hardcore DC fan (me) to the equally fascinating world of Marvel and taught me how to appreciate it...with the help of Sebastian Stan's puppy dog eyes and sinful thighs._

* * *

Many locals typically call the tall building downtown as the 'giant tower of death' due to its size. It stood mighty tall and proud, a colossus towering over the entire city. The building's rooftop was known as the spot where people would attempt to end their lives. For the cleaners working the night shift, it was a common occasion to witness miserable people sneak into the building at night, often intoxicated and depressed with the goal of ending their lives by attempting to jump off the 400-something-storey building. It was a habit of hers, ever since she started working as a night shift cleaner, to check the rooftop for any suicidal people throughout her shift. It was around two in the morning when she found an individual standing on the rooftop ledge. She approached the unaware person. From the looks of it, the person was a man, judging by his tall and muscular physique. He was clad in black and with his back to her, she could not see his face. She wondered what problem this person faced that led them to put their suicidal thoughts in motion.

"Excuse me!" she called out. The person didn't move…he didn't even look over his shoulder to look at her. "Are you really serious about jumping?" she asked, "why don't you come down. We can talk and maybe I can help change your mind." The person didn't move and she stood stiffly behind him. She was ready to pull the person towards her in case he made any sudden movements. "Come on down, please."

"Go away," hoarsely, the man spoke, addressing her. "You can't help."

She heard all sounds of desperation and misery in a person's voice before. This man standing on the ledge before her was not the first one she confronted and he probably won't be the last. However, of all the people she heard speak while standing on the ledge, it was this man who sounded the most broken of them all. During the six years that she had been working as a cleaner in the building since finishing high school, no one has ever jumped off the building during her shift. She had saved every single person who attempted to commit suicide during her shift. She wasn't about to tarnish that record now.

"So why are you trying to jump?" she asked, "did your girlfriend broke up with you? Did you lose your job? Are you broke?" she asked, referring to the most common problems she heard people talk to her about in the past.

For the first time, the man on the ledge looked over his shoulder, glancing at her direction. The first thing she noticed were his striking blue eyes. Not because of their stunning aquamarine colour but because of the amount of emotion within those eyes. She'd seen broken men many times before but this man takes the cake. He looked shattered and there was no word in the English dictionary that she could think of to accurately describe the look in the man's eyes. "You can't help me," he repeated his earlier words.

"Then let me," she told him as the strong gust of wind caused the hairs at the back of her neck to rise. The suicidal man shook his head. He had suffered enough. This was the only solution he saw possible. "Come on, let me help you. What's your name?" she continued to talk, hoping it would distract the man from his goal.

"I don't know," replied the suicidal man. There was nothing but pure honesty in his voice. He truly sounded as if he didn't know how to answer her question.

In his head, he recalled his confrontation with the blonde man. He called him a name that sounded so foreign yet so familiar at the same time.  _Bucky._  But then, he remembered being referred to as 'soldier' by the men whose orders he followed and now, he had fled from. He did not know which one he was supposed to be and the memories that started coming since the helicarrier confrontation was only making his head hurt even worse.

"Why don't you get down and come over here," she offered with a sincere smile, "let me listen to your story. Let me help you."

"You can't."

"I'll try to," she assured him, "just please, don't jump. You're still young. Life can be shitty to everybody and whatever problem you are facing now will be solved sooner or later. There's always a rainbow after the storm."

"Why are you doing this?" the suicidal man asked.

"Because I believe all life is precious," she clarified, "everybody has been put on this earth for a reason, everybody has a purpose and one day, we will all die one way or another for a reason. Jumping off a building is a terrible way to finish off your life especially when you clearly have not lived your life to the fullest."

Something about the woman struck him. Whether it was her determination to stop him from jumping, her words or the empathising look on her face, it was enough to convince him to put a halt to his suicidal act. He found himself standing in front of the relieved woman. He didn't address her or anything and before she could talk any more, he walked towards the elevator, leaving her in the rooftop on her own.

* * *

Her confrontation with the man on the ledge was certainly a weird one. By three in the morning, she finally finished her shift. She was more than eager to get home and sleep. She was exhausted. As soon as she stepped out of the building, she was greeted by the storm. The strong wind was enough to turn her umbrella inside out and suddenly, her jacket did very little to keep her dry and warm. She battled the storm and the strong wind and kept herself motivated with the image of her comfy bed. She began to wonder why she decided to leave her car again…she regretted being so frugal because she wouldn't mind using up more petrol than facing the storm in her current situation.

The wind and the hard hitting raindrops made her easy fifteen minute walk home difficult, therefore, it was not only proving to be challenging but it was also taking longer than she wanted. She was soaked within the first couple of minutes since she stepped out of work and her umbrella has proven itself useless. At one point, a very strong gust of wind blew and she swore that the wind almost carried her away. That was when she finally decided that it was not worth it to fight the storm. She approached a nearby store, which happened to be a 7-eleven and sought shelter inside where she could be warm and cosy. A bored looking man in his mid-40s stood behind the counter of the store and he frowned at the sight of her when she stepped inside. Apparently, she wasn't the only one seeking shelter inside the store and the storekeeper didn't appreciate having five other people inside his store, especially since they had no intention of purchasing anything from the store. However, the storekeeper was nice enough not to kick them out although he would occasionally glare at everyone every few minutes.

She decided to at least buy something in hopes that it will stop the storekeeper from sending a glare her way. She approached the coffee machine and decided to purchase one of the $1 coffees. She was shivering after all and her drenched clothes did nothing to improve the situation. Perhaps coffee can help warm her up. While putting a lid on top of her coffee cup, she noticed a lone figure battling the storm outside. Poor man, she thought. As she watched him for the next few seconds that followed, she realised she recognised the man clad in black. She remembered him from the rooftop. It was the man on the ledge!

Hastily, she left the store, leaving her coffee on the counter as she rushed to meet the lone figure battling the rain. He was just as soaked as her, in fact, he was even more drenched but it didn't seem to affect him. He wasn't even shivering and her teeth had been chattering as soon as she stepped out of the warm convenient store. "Hey!" she called out, earning his attention as she approached him. "Come inside, this storm isn't going to let you win," she told him but before he can refuse her offer, she grabbed his right arm and dragged him inside 7-eleven.

"Are you going to pay for your coffee?" monotonously, the storekeeper asked her, apparently, he didn't appreciate her leaving her coffee behind and not paying for it. Flushed, she nodded her head.

"Yes, of course," she politely replied, a little offended that the man acted as if she was the type of person who cannot afford a $1 coffee. She turned to the man she rescued from the storm. He was so tall and she never really realised it until now that he was standing so close to her. He was drenched from head to toe like her and his overgrown, dark hair clung to his face, concealing most of his face from her. "You want some coffee?" she asked him. She felt his blue eyes on her. She knew he was glaring at her now. She didn't wait for his response and instead, filled another cup with coffee before paying the unimpressed storekeeper $2.

She turned to her new companion who seemed to be assessing the place judging by the way his blue eyes moved around. A few seconds later, his icy blue eyes landed on her and a scowl decorated his face. She wondered what he would look like without the scowl. "Here's your coffee," she handed him one of the cups, "careful, it's pretty hot."

"I don't want it," he muttered while she was sipping her own coffee.

"Please," her brown eyes found his blue eyes as she pleaded politely. He continued to scowl but took the cup from her hand anyway. He didn't take a sip and she assumed he was only waiting for it to cool down a little. "I'm Alaska Talley," she introduced herself while keeping her free hand extended towards him, "call me Alaska, Lassie, Ali or whatever you wanna call me." She smiled at him friendlily. He glared down at her extended hand and took notice of her multi-coloured knitted gloves. He ignored her extended hand and refused to shake it. "So what do you go by? I know you told me earlier that you didn't know your name but surely people call you something. My mother calls me a little shit all the time and I still consider that a name." She grinned at him, showing him her teeth, they were white and straight.

He continued to glare at her while he remained quiet. She was asking him for a name. He had two but he didn't know which name to go by.  _Soldier_ …he could almost hear a voice call him but there was another voice in his head, the blonde man's voice and he called him  _Bucky_. He looked down at her face, she was expectantly waiting for his response. "Bucky," he told her, his voice sounded raspy as he listened to the way the name came out of his mouth. It sounded familiar and it felt familiar…way too familiar.

She smiled. "Bucky," she repeated. He thought it sounded nicer when she said it but despite that, the scowl on his face remained. "It's nice to meet you, Bucky."

* * *

**hey guys, this is my first Marvel FF so please forgive me if i ever make any mistake since i'm pretty new to the Marvel universe. The story is also set up after the Winter Soldier and before Civil War.**

 


	2. Chapter 2

It was almost half past four in the morning when the storm decided to settle down. She had finished her coffee long ago but her companion hasn't taken a single sip of his', instead, he held the cup of cold coffee stiffly in his gloved hand while blankly staring out the glass window of the store. He was a quiet person and she instantly noticed it about the brooding man. "So, um the rain's settled down. I should probably get myself home," she announced as she turned her gaze to her companion.

He tore his gaze off the glass window and glanced down at her…in fact, it was more like glared down at her. His eyes watched her as she dug around her bag for her wallet, she opened it and took out a card which she handed over to him. He eyed it and refused to take it from her hand. "It's a, um, suicide helpline you can call," she told him as she placed the card on top of his coffee cup. "You can give them a call and talk to them about your problems, they will listen and they might even be able to help you one way or another." She gave him a faint smile but the scowl on his face remained, it was as if it was a permanent part of his features.

Clearing her throat, she proceeded to pick up her wet umbrella on the floor. "Well, it's nice to meet you, Bucky and I hope that you overcome whatever it is you are suffering from," she told him. He didn't make a single noise to acknowledge what she said and she figured that he was not going to acknowledge her at all. After giving him a small smile, she trudged towards the door and stepped out of 7-eleven.

The cold temperature welcomed her as soon as she stepped out of the heated place. As she walked to the familiar way leading home, she could not help but think about Bucky. He was certainly the quietest person she had encountered. He refused to talk about his problems and the reason why she found him on the ledge. She respected his refusal to tell her anything about himself and his suicidal act. After all, she was just a random stranger. She could not help but wonder what he was suffering from that led to his attempted suicide. The pain in his troubled eyes told her that it must be something more than financial issues or a nasty break-up which a lot of people she found on the ledge had suffered from.

The streets were wet and dark with hardly any people in sight. As she neared home, she noticed something out of the ordinary in the path she had taken over a million times on her way home. She slowed down and instantly heard the footsteps not far behind her. It slowed down as soon as she did. It was as if the person following her was trying to keep their footsteps in sync so that she wouldn't hear or notice them. Cautiously, she glanced over her shoulder to see who it was hot on her trail. Before she could react, she was tackled to the ground. Someone's heavy weight kept her pinned to the wet ground as the strong scent of alcohol filled her nostrils.

Her instant reaction was to escape and get out of her attacker's grasp. Violently, she tried to free herself from the pair of hands that firmly held her down on the ground. "Let me go, asshole!" she yelled as she tried to claw whatever she can with her bare hands.

"Do not fucking move," spoke a slimy voice as she felt something cold against her neck. She froze, she already had a faint idea what the object against her neck might be even before she glanced down and saw a kitchen knife. The type of knife you would peel your potatoes with. She knew then that she was defeated. He got a weapon and it simply meant that he had the upper hand.

"What do you want, jerk?" shakily, she demanded. Where she got her sass, she had no idea.

"Give me all your stuff," said the robber. He was a big middle-aged man with a breath that smelled like alcohol.

"Okay, just get off me and I'll give you my wallet," she negotiated but the aggressive man simply pressed his knife harder against her skin. It was cold but it wasn't as sharp as she anticipated. She guessed it was the blunt side that he was pressing against her neck which meant she had a chance to gain the upper hand if she tried to overpower him when he's caught off guard.

"No!" shouted the man as she searched her brain for ideas to catch him off guard so that she could attack him while he was. However, before she could knee the man's balls, which was her initial plan, he let out a bellowing scream as someone snatched him off of her.

She automatically sat up on the wet ground where she had been pinned and watched in awe as the robber was thrown across the street with such brutal force she swore he must've broken his back from it. She looked at her rescuer and her jaw dropped. It was the man she left at 7-eleven just minutes ago. He approached the robber on the ground and picked him up with ease using simply his left hand. She gawked. Now how was that possible? The robber looked as if he was roughly 300 pounds! The robber attempted to put up a fight by aimlessly stabbing her rescuer with his kitchen knife as he violently tried to wriggle himself free from the strong man's grasp. She swore that the robber had successfully stabbed him at least once.

Then, everything happened so fast for the next few seconds that followed. Before her very eyes, she witnessed as the man named Bucky twisted the robber's right hand, prompting him to let go of his petty kitchen knife. A shriek escaped the robber's lips and it made the hairs at the back of her neck rise. He sounded as if he was being tortured. She heard a cracking noise as Bucky dropped the robber on the ground. She could only imagine the damage Bucky had done to the robber's wrist. Her rescuer turned his gaze to her. He was scowling and he looked almost sinister with the dark look in his eyes. She found her senses and got up from the wet ground.

"Look out!" she screamed frantically upon noticing the man on the ground behind Bucky attempting to get up. She heard the deafening sound of gunfire.

The man who was apparently shot simply turned around to face his attacker and sent his fist straight into his face, knocking the robber out cold. She rushed towards Bucky who had been shot somewhere in his left leg despite the fact that he looked completely unaffected by it. "A-Are you okay?" she asked, suddenly feeling lame for asking such pathetic question. He'd just been shot, of course, he wasn't okay. "I'll take you to the hospital, I'm so sorry-…"

"No," firmly, he told her upon hearing the word 'hospital'.

"B-But you need to get the bullet out-…"

"No," coldly, he told her as he glared her way. The way he looked at her scared her a little. It was threateningly scary the way his eyes seemed so much darker.

"A-Alright, no hospital," she assured him. She began to wonder why he didn't want to go to the hospital. Was it because he had no insurance and money? She eyed the unconscious robber on the sidewalk.

"Leave him," noticing where she was looking, Bucky addressed the next idea she had on her head. Apparently, he didn't want her calling the cops too.

"Well, we need to get that slug out of your leg, I'm no surgeon but I can try. My place is just a couple of streets away," she approached him, offering to help him walk but the man was stubborn and refused to accept her offer. Apparently, he can walk perfectly fine on his own without her assistance.

It only took several minutes of walking in complete, utter silence before they reached their destination, the Pearl Palace.

 


	3. Chapter 3

During its glory days, the Pearl Palace was once a nice little apartment complex with its exterior painted a striking white colour while its interior was clean, organised and free from vermin. Now, many, many years later after it was first erected, it now stood ageing and ugly. There was a time when the neighbourhood wasn't so rough but things have Pearl Palace was now located in the seedy part of the neighbourhood and for that reason rent was cheap. It's white exterior paint was not only marred with graffiti, dust and dirt but the paint itself had aged, faded and weathered throughout the years. Inside, the stench of mould was the first thing that would greet anyone who would step inside. The stench was not the worse thing, in fact, it was just one of the many issues of the place. There were cobwebs that were presumably decades old adorning the ceiling and every crevices available. As well as that, the walls were not only adored with mouldy spots but were also yellowy from years of neglect. Occasionally, there would be vermin loitering the hallway as well as unpleasant insects. The rundown place has seen much better days but despite its unpleasantness, it served as a home for ten residents.

They entered apartment number 8, which was her apartment. As soon as they stepped inside and she turned the lights on, he was greeted with the sight of an apartment that looked as if it didn't belong to the putrid building that it was a part of. Her apartment was clean, spotless and very organised. Not to mention, it didn't smell bad like the lobby outside, rather, it smelled like vanilla from the incense she burned the night before. She kicked out of her shoes and her quiet companion noticed that one of her socks had stripped patterns while the other one was adorned with flower prints as she disappeared to the bathroom, leaving him standing awkwardly in the middle of her living room.

He looked around the place. The first thing he noticed was the brightly coloured patchwork sofa and then the bamboo coffee table. The walls were painted a light turquoise colour, which contrasted the white ceiling and windowpane. Then, there was a study table in the corner of the room with a mountain of paperwork and next to it was a bookshelf filled with books and several little knick-knacks. Bucky approached the bookshelf and examined its contents. He recognised several classic literature in her collection including Frankenstein, a full Jane Austen collection and the Tarzan series. Then, his blue eyes landed on one of the picture frames in the shelf. It contained a photograph of a husky man with a smiling girl on his back. Bucky recognised the smile on the girl's face and quickly assumed it was Alaska. Then, his gaze landed on another framed photograph, it was more recent and had a better quality that the other one. She was with a different man who looked much older than her.

His alert and trained senses detected her presence even before she could speak. Bucky turned his gaze to the direction he heard the footsteps. "That's a photo of me with my friend, Willis," the woman nodded at the photograph he had been looking at. "Willis is a war veteran, he fought in Vietnam and he used to be my next door neighbour." She smiled fondly at the memory until her eyes landed on his left leg and her smile faded.

She motioned for him to sit down and asked where the bullet hit him. Wordlessly, he rolled up the left leg of his pants, revealing his lower leg. The bullet was buried somewhere in his bloody calf. "I can treat myself," he told her simply as he watched her remove the contents of her small first aid kit. Without allowing her to respond to his announcement, he picked up the tweezers from her hand and proceeded to pluck the bullet from his flesh with no gloves or without even cleaning the blood off his leg. She winced as she watched him conduct the act. He didn't even flinch as he pulled out a bloody bullet from his flesh.

He seemed hesitant when she began to clean his wound after. It was as if he was cautious that she was going to do something terrible to him but eventually, he began to relax as she used up more than a handful of cotton swabs. "Thank you, for having my back out there," she told him as she wrapped a bandage around his leg. "Did he, um, stab you?" she asked, wondering if there were any more injuries that needed to be treated. Her gaze turned to his side where she swore he had been stabbed, especially because the fabric of his clothing had been ripped.

"No," he said simply but she refused to believe him. She can't let him go with a bleeding side and an infected wound, not after he saved her ass from being mugged. Without warning, she reached forward and lifted the hem of his shirt, anticipating to see the severity of his stab wound. She gawked when she saw nothing but his evidently muscular lower belly. Now embarrassed, she let go of his shirt and looked up at his face with a sheepish smile only to see him scowling down at her.

"Nevermind," red-faced, she said. She could've sworn he got stabbed on his side but there was absolutely no injury there. It was as if it healed in a matter of seconds which was totally impossible. She assured herself that the thick fabric of his shirt must've protected him although she had her doubts.

She got up from her seat and disappeared in her bedroom. She returned a couple of minutes later. "Here, these clothes used to be my Dad's, hopefully his clothes will fit you. The bathroom is to your left."

Rather awkwardly, he wordlessly took the clothes she was offering him and trudged to the direction of the bathroom. Her bathroom was just as clean as the rest of her apartment but rather than smelling like vanilla, it smelled like berries. As soon as he stepped inside, he was greeted with the sight of his reflection. He scowled, he didn't like seeing his reflection in the mirror and he hurriedly changed out of his wet clothes in hopes that the quicker he get it done, the less he had to see his reflection.

She had already changed out of her damp clothes and was clad in a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt when he stepped out of the bathroom. She was busy putting the spare blanket and pillow she had taken from her room on the coffee table next to the sofa when he stepped forward. The first thing she noticed was the shiny thing that she saw from the corner of her eye which turned out to be his left arm. She didn't say anything about it and assumed he had prosthetic arms like the war veterans her friend, Willis, knew. The short-sleeved t-shirt that was a little too small for his physique didn't hide his metal arm as good as his hoody and gloves did earlier. She wondered why he got the metal arm. Did it hurt when he lost his real arm?

"You must be tired, I got the sofa sorted out for you. I figured you should catch some sleep here instead of going home, wherever your home is, since I don't think it's good for your leg if I allow you to walk," she informed him as she stepped towards him and took him by surprise when she took his damp clothes from him. "I'll pop them in the dryer," she explained when she noticed his suspicious glare sent her way. He scowled at her although he looked a little curious as if he was tempted to ask her something but refused to. Instead, he awkwardly approached the sofa and stiffly sat down wordlessly. She disappeared into the bathroom and returned a few minutes later to see him still sitting down on the sofa stiffly.

"You should get some sleep," she told him on her way to her room. He looked up from his lap and watched her with his familiar frown. "Just knock on my door if you need anything." His eyes followed her until she disappeared inside her room and the door closed behind her.

* * *

_There was a house, an old white bungalow house with a red roof and a big courtyard. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was only beginning to set. A boy and a little girl had been playing in the courtyard while a heavily pregnant woman watched on. Suddenly, the little girl let out a squeal as her older brother tripped and fell flat on his face._

_"Mama! Bucky tripped and his nose is bleeding!" screamed the little girl. She was a pretty little girl with rosy cheeks and blue eyes that matched the pregnant woman's and her big brother's azure eyes. Her chestnut hair was pulled back in a ponytail and as result, it revealed her heart shaped face. She jumped up and down while waving her hands around in an attempt to earn her mother's attention but her mother was already on her way._

_"Rebecca, please, calm down," sighed the pregnant woman. "James will be fine, won't you, James?" smiled their mother as she helped the boy up. She had taken the handkerchief from her pocket and began wiping the boy's nose with it. "It'll be alright, James," she assured him soothingly._

_"Does it hurt?" inquired Rebecca. The sight of the excessive amount of blood made her feel slightly queasy but her big brother seemed unmoved by it._

_"No," he answered, "it doesn't even hurt."_

_Their mother chuckled. "That's right, you're my strong, precious boy," she grinned while pinching her son's cheek._

When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was the white ceiling marred with patches of yellow as result of old age. He could smell vanilla in the air as he reached for his face and rubbed his sore, bloodshot eyes. His head was pounding. It was hurting. His heart was racing. It was pounding very hard against his chest.  _Rebecca_. He recalled. He saw an image of a smiling, chestnut haired girl.  _Rebecca_. He knew Rebecca. Sweet Rebecca was James' sister. She was  _his_  sister. The Rebecca who won't share her secret stash of sweets with him but he would always find a way to find her hiding spot and steal sneakily from her secret stash. Loudmouthed Rebecca who would announce to the family the girls she suspected he had a crush on whenever it was suppertime. Rebecca who he had to share his bedroom with when their younger brothers were born… _Rebecca_. He closed his eyes as her image lingered in his mind. He remembered her. Then he remembered his mother too. His  _Ma_. He recalled her warm embrace and her soothing voice. She was there when he was hungry, when he was tired or when he was hurt. She would always tell him how proud she was of him whenever he'd do well at school and she'd call him her precious boy. She loved him dearly like all her children but he was her first child and she was his first love.

He got up from the sofa where he lay. His head was still pounding but he forced himself up. It was daylight already, the sun was high up in the sky but there was no sign of the woman who had let him in her home earlier. He glanced at the direction of her bedroom and saw the closed door. He turned his gaze to the direction of the bathroom where she had gone to earlier with his wet clothes. He trudged to the bathroom and he spotted his clothes instantly, they were folded neatly on top of a white, metal box he assumed was the dryer she had been talking about. He stripped out of his borrowed clothes and put on the dried clothes. Once done, he stepped out of the bathroom and trudged to front door. He stepped outside with one goal in mind…to find home.

 


	4. Chapter 4

There was no sign of the brooding, suicidal man who referred to himself as 'Bucky' when Alaska woke up. As soon as she stepped out of her bedroom, she found an empty sofa. It was left behind in a way that informed her that the person who had been lying in it left in a rush. The imprint of his body was still evident and the blanket was lying on the floor, discarded. When she made her way to the bathroom, she found his dried clothes missing and the clothes she had provided him were scattered on the bathroom floor. A sigh escaped her lips. He was gone.

Alaska has encountered a number of suicidal people in the past. She had talked those people out of jumping off the building during her shifts at work. She often found herself moved after her encounter with such people. They all had different stories and it often stuck with her even after their encounter. It was the same for the man on the ledge from last night. She couldn't help but wonder where he'd gone to. She hoped that he wasn't attempting his suicidal plan somewhere else but if he was, she hoped there was someone to talk him out of it. The pain in his eyes was unforgettable and it was all she saw last night while she lay on her bed. She could only hope that he didn't let that pain win.

For the next half an hour, she busied herself in the kitchen, cooking herself some breakfast. She stepped out of the kitchen later with her bacon and egg toast in one hand and a mug of hot coffee in the other. She turned the TV on and plopped down on the couch where her guest had spent the night. A shampoo commercial instantly greeted her. The shampoo ad ended a few seconds later and the news came up. The news anchor reported the basic happenings that occurred during the past 24 hours. She stared blankly at the TV, not exactly interested as the news anchor's voice entered her one ear and left the other. The TV was just on so that the noise coming from it could disturb the eerie silence surrounding her apartment. She always liked to keep her TV on when she was alone, it creates an illusion that she wasn't alone.

"…and finally, we have some news update in regards to the explosive confrontation that occurred two days ago involving Captain America and the dangerous man dubbed as the Winter Soldier. At this time, the identity of the Winter Soldier has been confirmed," spoke the reporter as a footage of the last confrontation between the Winter Soldier and Captain America was shown. By the blurriness of the footage, it was obvious that the footage had been filmed from a great distance. The so-called Winter Soldier was clad in a black costume and the poor quality of the footage made it impossible to see his facial features clearly.

She thought about how much her father loved Captain America and a sense of relief took over her to learn that Captain America was now recovering from the injuries he had acquired. Meanwhile, the news anchor talked about some leaked classified files circling the internet. She wasn't exactly paying attention to the news. It didn't interest her. "…these classified files reveal the identity of the Winter Soldier as none other than Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, a World War II hero who had been presumed dead..." the TV then showed an old image of Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes dressed in his crisp military uniform.

The picture took her off guard. There was something familiar about the face of the World War II soldier shown on TV. She recognized those blue eyes but at the same time, they looked different. They reminded her of the haunting blue eyes of the man on the ledge but the man's eyes didn't bore the pain that Bucky had in his eyes, instead, they were lively and hopeful. The man on TV looked crisp in his military uniform with his short hair combed back to make him look presentable. His face was clean-shaven which revealed his structured cheekbones. There was something oddly familiar about the man in the picture as she narrowed her eyes at it while taking a sip of her hot coffee.

"…the files reveal that Barnes had in fact survived and has been working as an assassin for the criminal organization known as Hydra. He's once again presumed dead after his last confrontation with Captain America two days ago. However, his body hasn't been recovered yet. If you have any useful information, please contact your local crime stoppers…" The image on the screen was replaced by another clip, it was a clip of the Winter Soldier, without his mask, firing his gun at Captain America. This clip was a better quality than the clip from earlier and Alaska gawked at it.

In shock, she dropped her mug of hot coffee on her carpeted floor. She didn't even realize that she had spilled her coffee all over her carpet as she stared, wide-eyed at the man on her TV. She recognized the metal limb immediately as much as she recognized his face. She could recognize the scowl on his face anytime and anywhere. In fact, she recognized those blue eyes now and the familiar scowl. It was the man on the ledge! The man she allowed in her home just a few hours ago!

* * *

Upon discovering the identity of the man on the ledge or 'Bucky' as he called himself, she found herself paying the local public library a visit and searching both old and new newspapers as well as the internet for information about James Buchanan Barnes also known as the Winter Soldier. She was eventually greeted with a mountain of information regarding James Buchanan Barnes not only from old newspaper articles but from the leaked Hydra files that were all over the internet. Barnes was a former soldier of the 107th Infantry Regiment and later on, the Howling Commandos during World War II. It had been presumed that he had died in combat but recent information from the leaked files online revealed that he had been transformed by the organization, Hydra, into a cold-blooded assassin known as the Winter Soldier who would be sent on missions to eliminate Hydra's many enemies. The leaked information that she had found online didn't reveal very much and were all very vague since the leaked files mostly revealed information about Hydra's other illegal activities. The information about the Winter Soldier online weren't as abundant. The data she did manage to find revealed vague information about Barnes being a subject of the Winter Soldier Program conducted by the Soviets after they found his body. A lot of foreign names that Alaska was not familiar with popped up such as an 'Arnim Zola' and an 'Alexander Pierce'. It was gut-wrenching to read the information she managed to uncover about the Winter Soldier. James Buchanan Barnes may be a hero but the Winter Soldier was the opposite, he was a heartless assassin. The leaked information talked about him as if he was a weapon and not at all a person. He was more like an 'it' than a 'he'.

As much as it spooked her to learn about the criminal record of the man she allowed in her home, his eyes haunted her more than his criminal acts. As days passed, Alaska would spend several hours of her day thinking about his troubled eyes and during night time, she would dream about his troubled blue eyes one night after the other. They screamed at her for help. However, he was gone. She should be relieved more than anything that a deadly assassin who crashed the night in her sofa had left her unscathed…but she wasn't. Instead, she worried whether he had successfully jumped off any tall buildings but so far, the news hasn't reported anything along those lines. Eventually, Alaska's life got busier and she kept all thoughts about the man on the ledge somewhere at the back of her mind while she prioritized other things in her life.


	5. Chapter 5

It was only seven in the evening when Alaska finished her shift from work. A co-worker swapped his shift with her graveyard shift so that he would be able to attend his child's school play, therefore, she would be spending the night in her apartment and not cleaning a skyscraper for once. On her way home, she picked up some Chinese take-away as she began planning what movie she would be watching for the night. The walk home didn't take very long and she picked up her mail from her letterbox on her way to her apartment.

Looking through the envelopes with her name on it, she found that there were several junk mails, a couple of bills and the last one was a very distinct envelope stamped with a particular 'X' logo. Alaska stopped in front of her door and fished for her keys in her pocket while she read the contents of the letter from the envelope stamped 'X'. She stepped inside her dark apartment and kicked the door shut while her free hand searched for the light switch in the dark. She almost screamed as soon as light flooded the room and she caught sight of a figure standing in the middle of her living room.

"You scared the crap out of me!" red-faced, the woman exclaimed as she clutched her chest.

The man dressed in black bowed his head, as if he was ashamed. "Sorry."

She had momentarily forgotten the shocking details she learned about him as she looked at him in relief. She was relieved to discover that he hasn't jumped off any buildings when he left her home a few days ago. She noticed that he looked shabbier than he did when she last encountered him. He wasn't drenched from the rain this time but he was raggedy like a hobo. "I saw you on the news," she admitted as she remained standing where she was, near the door, for easy get away of course. "They call you the 'Winter Soldier' and they're looking for you."

He looked up, his blue eyes instantly met hers and there it was, the troubled and miserable glint in his eyes that haunted her. Her stomach lurched. Would if make her a bad person if she felt sorry for this man…this  _murderer_ …just because his eyes looked pained? "I shouldn't have come here," he muttered, more to himself than to her.

He had gone to Brooklyn, miserably relying on his poor memory for direction and after many days, he eventually found his childhood home. A new family lived there now. They were not at all related to him but they pointed him to James Buchanan Barnes's empty grave alongside his parents' and his sister, Rebecca's. It was the first time he cried after a very long time but he had wiped his tears off and reminded himself that soldiers do not cry. Only cowards cry. He left his family's resting place and found himself travelling back to the one place he could think of where he can be safe…the Pearl Palace.

"Where did you go when you left?" softly, she asked him. He didn't realise that he had approached the door in an attempt to leave but she stopped him, blocking his way.

She was a lot shorter than him, he noticed, and her cheeks were a rosy red colour from the chilly temperature outside. "H-Home," hoarsely, he replied. It felt weird to call the place he'd gone to as 'home,' especially when the place he had gone to was no longer his home. He didn't have a home now so he had no right calling any place his home. "It's where I grew up," he added, it was the more appropriate way to describe it, he figured. She nodded her head. She looked as if she understood but he had doubts that she did.

"Why did you come back here?" she asked, her tone remained soft and she didn't sound aggravated that he was back in her life, disturbing it.

He looked down at her face. Their eyes met. She had a pair of doe brown eyes the colour of chocolate. "Because I don't know where else to go," he looked down, bowing his head and avoiding her eyes but she had seen the troubled look on his face even before he could hide it from her. He was struggling and she felt sorry for him. It was overwhelming for her to learn that her place was the safest place he could think of.

"I would be breaking the law if I let a wanted man stay in my apartment to lay low," she started, "but it would be heartless of me to let you go wandering around the street, homeless and miserable. You can stay here, the sofa's all yours," she gave him a small smile before she busied herself undoing her shoes and hanging her jacket up. The whole time, he stood stiffly where she had left him.

"Why are you helping me?" he finally asked.

"Because you helped me," she replied, "I guess this is my way of repaying you for saving my ass from getting robbed," she told him. "Want some Chinese food?" she raised the paper bag she held, attempting to enlighten the mood.

"I'm not hungry," he claimed as he trudged towards the sofa. He sat down noisily.

"You sure? They make the best friend rice-…"

"I'm not hungry," he repeated himself and she was wise enough not to force something that cannot be forced. She nodded her head and made her way to the kitchen, leaving him be.

* * *

_He had just finished his lunch, his little sister Rebecca had packed it for him. She had been packing their lunch for the past few weeks because their mother was too sick to even get up from the bed. He thought her egg sandwich tasted horrid but it was his duty as her big brother to appreciate it._ _With his breath smelling like eggs, he trudged to the playground. He figured that he could play ball with the other kids. However, he was greeted with the sight of a_ _group of bullies surrounding a scrawny blonde boy with a bruised and bloody face. They had been taking turns, beating him to pulp in the school playground. No one dared to approach them and break the fight to help save the helpless scrawny boy and there were no teachers around to stop it._

_It baffled him that no one dared to stop the fight, not even any of the older kids. His little sister, Rebecca, was always bullied but he would always be there to protect her. He hated bullies for that reason, because they made her cry. He hated seeing Rebecca cry._

_Perhaps it was the big brother in him that made him approach the group of boys. "Hey!" he shouted, earning their attention. He was fairly big and he was a pretty strong for a boy his age and the bullies were roughly his size. "Why don't you all pick on someone your own size!" he told the bullies._

_They snickered at him as they abandoned the scrawny blonde boy they have been bullying to surround him instead. "Why don't you mind your own business, Barnes," exclaimed one of the bullies._

_His father would always teach him how to punch, it was part of being a man, he would say. He turned to the main bully who spoke and mocked him and planted his fist into his face. The boy stumbled back and fell on his butt. No one had ever punched him before. In fact, no one has ever challenged him before because he was one of the toughest bullies in the playground. The sight of the defeated bully frightened his friends and they fled like cowards. It was only a matter of time before the main bully got to his feet and also fled away._

_He chuckled to himself, he was excited to brag all about what happened during suppertime in front of the whole family. He turned to the kid who was being bullied. "What's your name?" he asked._

_"Steve," replied the scrawny blonde as he wiped away the blood off his lips._

_He smiled. "I'm James but my sister calls me Bucky."_

_Suddenly, the scene morphed into something else. The playground disappeared along with the boy named Steve. He was surrounded by armed men as he sat half naked and restrained. The doctors just finished mending his bionic arm and a man dressed in a crisp suit was standing in front of him._

_"…your work has been a gift to mankind," spoke the man in a suit. Pierce... he recalled his name…Alexander Pierce. "You shaped the century and I need you to do it one more time," said Pierce. "Society is at a tipping point between order and chaos, tomorrow morning we're gonna give it a push but if you don't do your part, I can't do mine," Pierce told him, "and HYDRA can't give the world the freedom it deserves. He was expecting him to fulfil his duty. He needed to complete his mission and eliminate the people he was meant to eliminate._

_He recalled the blonde man he encountered on the bridge. He called him Bucky. He recalled his name as Steve and he was the same scrawny kid from the playground. Pierce ordered him to kill Steve…it was his duty to. "But I knew him," he found himself telling Pierce. He felt hopeless and Pierce was not at all sympathetic. He didn't understand his conundrum. He didn't understand how confused he felt. Why was Pierce asking him to kill Steve for the good of the world? He was his friend…_

_Pierce scowled. "Prep him!" he ordered the doctors._

_The doctors looked hesitant. One of them spoke. "But he's been out of cryo-freeze for too long."_

_"Wipe him then start over," coldly, Pierce ordered._

_Then there was pain. Horrible, excruciating, unforgiving pain…_

"Hey! HEY! HEY!" shouted a voice, waking him up as his body jolted in surprise. He felt a pair of hands shaking his shoulders almost violently. "Oh, thank god," she spoke as he opened her eyes to see a pair of familiar deep, chocolate brown eyes blinking back at him. "Are you okay? You were screaming so much."

He sat up and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. "I'm fine," he grunted although he felt nowhere near fine. His heart was racing, he was covered in sweat and his head was pounding as if someone had been hitting it continuously with a brick.

She got up and disappeared into the kitchen, momentarily leaving him. She returned almost immediately after only a few seconds with a glass of water which she handed over to him. "Are you sure you're fine?" she asked, looking particularly concerned. He noticed that she was still clad in her sleepwear and he assumed that he must've woken her up. "You sounded like you were being tortured in your sleep. I'm guessing you had a pretty nasty nightmare, huh?"

"I remembered," he told her instead. He recalled the blonde boy from his dream…it was the same person as the blonde man he confronted on the helicarrier…the man who was supposed to be his mission.  _Steve_.

"Remembered what?" she asked, genuinely confused simply because she had no idea what he was talking about.

"S-Steve, his name is Steve," shakily, he told her, unsure why he was sharing such private information to a stranger like her. She furrowed her eyebrows, looking even more confused. "S-Some of the things I've forgotten when they erased my memories, I dreamt about them," he looked up at her, recalling the painful procedure that Pierce and his scientists had inflicted on him when they sent him to eliminate Captain America...or Steve.

This was news to her. She had no idea that he had some type of amnesia and that the people who 'owned' him had caused it. The leaked files certainly revealed nothing about the Winter Soldier being amnesiac, at least, not the files she found and read. Perhaps if she dug a little deeper, she might've been able to find some information about it. She sat down on the sofa next to him. "Is that why you had trouble remembering your name when I found you standing on the ledge?" she asked, recounting their very first encounter and how he seemed to have trouble determining who he was.

He looked down. "Yes," he replied quietly. "They wiped away my memories," shakily, he recounted. It made him feel defeated knowing that his mind was a mess but at the same time, it made him angry that such misfortune happened to him. "I don't know who I am anymore and I need to get my memories back to find out."

She looked at him, he was staring at the floor and he looked very gloomy and hopeless. "Then I'll help you get it back," she told him.

Her words made him look at her with a confused expression on his face. "Why?" he asked her as if it was wrong of her to offer him help. "I've done terrible things," he told her. He felt disgusted with himself to admit it. The Winter Soldier existed within him…he was the Winter Soldier and the blood of his victims remained in his hands no matter how many times he washed his hands. He may not remember all of his victims but the memories are slowly returning and he was beginning to recall their faces and it made him feel guilty and less and less human.

"We've all done terrible things," she comforted him, "it's a normal part of life. Nobody is perfect. You're not perfect but that doesn't mean you deserve to suffer and be miserable for the rest of your life," she told him. "Besides, you also remind me of my Dad," she admitted as he followed her gaze, she had gotten up from her seat and picked up one of the framed photographs on her bookshelf. She handed it to him. It was the photograph he saw during his first visit to her apartment. It was a photograph of a little girl, her, and a burly man, her father. "For as long as I can remember, he always had the same miserable look in his eyes as you. You look just as troubled, afraid and lonely as he did. It's hauntingly familiar," she revealed.

"Almost a decade ago, my Dad jumped off that same building where I found you. We had a big fight before he died and I can't even remember what petty thing I was angry at him for. He left that morning while I was watching cartoons, I never said goodbye or even told him I love him and he never came back. Hours later, I saw the news. No one saved my Dad, no one talked him out of it. I saw the signs that he was a broken person but I did nothing about it." She didn't exactly know why she was telling a complete stranger such personal matter about herself but she did anyway. He was no longer frowning, instead, he had an impassive expression on his face but his eyes told her he was curious. "When I was a kid, my Dad told me to believe in destiny. You weren't the first one I talked out of committing suicide but you were the first one who truly reminded me of him. Perhaps destiny brought you to me. I can make it up to my Dad if I help you out with whatever it is that troubles you."

 


	6. Chapter 6

He didn't sleep at all for the rest of the evening. When morning came, she found him where she had left him the night before, in the sofa. He cannot go back to sleep anymore for simply one reason…he didn't want to remember his painful memories during his time as Hydra's pet. The recollection of the torture he had gone through made him both angry and afraid. Angry because of what they had done to him and afraid of what they were capable of. As well as that, he feared seeing the faces of his victims again. Most of their faces still haven't returned to him but he feared that when he closed his eyes, he'd see them. If only he can control the memories he can retrieve, he'd recall the memories of his childhood, of Rebecca, his mother, his father…of Steve.

"Want some?" he looked up and found Alaska handing him over a plate. He stared at it blankly and when he didn't respond, she placed it on his lap. "I figured you must be hungry since you didn't eat dinner last night," she said as she sat down next to him. She proceeded to eat the food from her own plate.

"What is it?" he asked her as he poked the food with his fork.

"Oh right, they're ramen noodles," she told him as she took the fork from his hand, stopping him from playing with the food. "For people on a tight budget like me, it's pretty cheap and pretty tasty. I know it's not really breakfast food but who cares, it's still food in my book," she smiled as she tried to feed him some. "Here comes the airplane, open up," animatedly, she exclaimed as he awkwardly opened his mouth. She fed him like how a mother would feed her toddler and as soon as she got some of the noodles in his mouth, he was instantly hit with the foreign flavour. The only food he ever recalled eating were the tasteless, slimy food that Hydra's doctors fed him to keep nutrition in his system. It tasted horrible and the doctors had to force it down his throat. It was almost weird to discover that food could taste so  _nice_. "I'm not a very good cook, I hope you're not secretly judging me, I mean, it's no five star restaurant meal-…"

"It's good," he assured her as the apples of her cheeks automatically turned red. "It's just that I was never fed this way and I don't know how to eat like this," he admitted.

She furrowed her eyebrows. "How did you eat before?"

"Through a tube."

Wide-eyed, she looked at him. "I'm sorry to hear that," she admitted truthfully. She realised instantly why he had not been eager to eat…because he didn't know how to. He was so used to being force fed through a tube that when presented with a plate of food, he didn't know what to do and he didn't copied the way she was eating because it was so foreign to him. He had never seen someone eat with a spoon or a fork with a plate full of solid food in hand that he didn't trust it because he wasn't fed that way. "Look Bucky, you're in the free world now. If this Hydra organisation did terrible things to you before, they can't do that to you anymore. You can eat whatever you like. You're free and safe now, alright?" she comforted him softly.

He looked at her, she was so optimistic that he didn't want to burst her bubble. His instincts told him that it would only be a matter of time before Hydra starts to look for him, he never completed his mission after all and it was his duty to return to report on his mission. If Hydra had given up on him, then there was still the authority he had to worry about and he knew that he wouldn't be having a jolly good time with them either. They ate in silence afterwards. He ate slowly, analysing every flavour from the foreign food she offered him. Meanwhile, she was busy flicking through some old newspaper.

She flicked through the pages of the newspaper and saw an advertisement for the Captain America Exhibit at the Smithsonian's Institute. "Hey, do you wanna come here? They might have some useful stuff about you," she showed him the ad as he looked up from the floor to the paper she held up. "It's a good place to start." He looked away from the paper to look at her face. He looked at her real hard that it made her a little uncomfortable. She felt as if he was peering into her soul the way his blue eyes stared at her so intensely. "What?"

"I don't understand why you want to help me," he claimed. She guessed he had every right to be confused…she didn't know exactly why too.

"Like I said last night, you remind me of my Dad, the way you seem so lost," she reminded him. She looked back down at the newspaper and busied flicking through the pages. "If you want me to be honest, I just feel bad for you. I personally think it sucks that you can't remember anything. I'd hate to lose my identity like you did. I'm just being a decent human being which I failed to be when my Dad needed me to be."

"I don't need your pity," muttered the brooding man and she instantly regretted expressing her sympathy. She had momentarily forgotten that he was a man and as always, his male ego, like every other man, didn't appreciate being pitied.

"Alright then don't see it as pity then," she responded back. "Just see it as a friend helping a friend," she told him and before he could tell her they weren't friends, she continued, "we might as well be friends if you're going to be living under my roof. What do you think?"

He continued to frown. "Fine." She smiled. Upon witnessing her smile, he remembered several faces. Faces of different smiling women from his past as several names came rushing back with the faces. There was Amy, Susan, Rose, Mary, Connie, Bonnie…

"What's wrong?" noticing the change of expression on his face, she asked. He was soon clutching his head and groaning to himself as different faces of different women came rushing back to him. A memory of his first kiss returned to him. Then he recalled the first time he took a girl out on a date and her name was Sylvia. He remembered the first time a girl slapped him… "Bucky, are you okay?" He looked up at her and saw the worried look on her face. The memories stopped rushing back and suddenly, all he saw was her, the woman called Alaska. "Here, have some water," she handed him his untouched glass of water and offered it to him. "Are you okay? You looked like you were about to pass out."

_"You looked like you were about to pass out!" giggled a girl with chestnut hair. "So, did she said yes? Is she going out on a date with you?"_

_"You talk too much, Rebecca, shut up."_

_The chestnut haired girl giggled. "So she said no? Ohhh, I can't wait to tell Steve about this."_

"Rebecca."

"What? Rebecca who?" eyebrows furrowed, Alaska asked. Her brown eyes blinked back at him as he came out of his trance.

"My little sister, her name was Rebecca," she heard him say quietly. She realised then that he was remembering things. She got up from her seat and walked to her desk. She wrote the name Rebecca down on a piece of paper.

"Any other names?"

He recalled the names of the women whose faces he remembered. They weren't important, he figured. They were just flings and hook-ups. They meant nothing to him. But he recalled another name. "Steve."

* * *

Half an hour later and she left the bathroom, smelling like berries and vanilla, dressed only in a floral robe with her hair wrapped in a towel. She found him standing in front of her desk, looking down at the pieces of papers scattered all over it. Although he knew that she had gotten out of the toilet, he didn't acknowledged her or looked her way as he continued to look down at the contents of the desk.

"I work as comic book artist and a penciller," she told him when she stopped next to him, following the direction where his gaze was. He was looking at the papers containing her drawings and illustrations. "It's my day job, it helps me save up for college and my cleaner job at night helps pay for the rent and the food."

Finally, he turned to look at her. Her scent was so strong and so feminine. "You're good," he complimented. She felt the heat crawl up her neck. She had been complimented about her talent before but not many ever made her blush.

"Thanks," coyly, she said. "It's your turn to have a shower," she smiled at him as she handed him a towel.

"No," he shook his head, taking her by surprise. She figured he didn't know how to just like how he didn't know how to eat because he had forgotten how to and he had been treated so inhumanely.

"I'll teach you how to," she offered him but he simply glared at her mistrustfully.

"I don't need it," he said.

"Okay, okay," she assured him, deciding not to press it. She guessed he just didn't fully trust his environment yet and she'd allow him time to adjust. She disappeared inside her room and returned a few minutes later with some clothes for him before returning inside her room again to get herself dressed.

Several minutes later, they stepped out of the Pearl Palace with Bucky clad in his borrowed clothes. They stopped in front of an old white sedan parked in the next street and they soon boarded the vehicle to make their way to the Smithsonian Institute. Her car smelled like her, like berries and vanilla. She drove rather fast and recklessly as if she was in a hurry to get to their destination. The whole time, her companion sat stiffly in his seat while he kept his eyes on the road ahead. The car radio was playing some blues rock music and she seemed to be enjoying it judging by the way she would occasionally drum her fingers on the steering wheel.

"The first and only time I've been to the Smithsonian was when I was around 10," she told him halfway through their journey. "My Dad's a big Captain America fan and all he wanted to see was the Captain America exhibition but I was more interested in seeing the planes, spacecraft and the rockets," she admitted with a small smile. He said nothing in response and the only noise in the car soon just came from the radio.

Eventually, they arrived at the Smithsonian and although it was a weekday, the place was bustling with tourists and school kids. He walked alongside her in the crowded place, with his borrowed clothes and a baseball cap, he blended in well in the crowd. No one would ever suspected who he really was. For their first few minutes inside the Smithsonian, they wandered around first, looking at the other exhibits but it didn't take very long before they ended up in the exhibit that they actually came for. As soon as they stepped inside the Captain America exhibit, they were greeted with the sight of hoards of school children who were exploring the exhibit for their fieldtrips. "Are you feeling okay over there?" he heard her ask as they stepped deeper inside.

"Yeah," he replied although he field somehow overwhelmed. The face of the blonde man who called him  _Bucky_  was everywhere. It was  _Steve_. The scrawny boy from his childhood. He was his mission, Alexander Pierce expected him to eliminate him but he didn't.

Alaska led the way and stopped in front one of the exhibitions which showed what Captain America looked like before he was Captain America. The information listed under a photo of a scrawny young man detailed Steven Roger's height and weight before the super-soldier serum. She dug around her bag and pulled out a notebook and a pen. She opened to a particular page where she had listed two names. Rebecca and Steve.

"Does he look familiar?" she asked her companion who was looking intently at the photo of Steven Rogers before the super-soldier serum.

"Yes, I was fighting him," came his whispered reply.

"No, I mean way before that," she said.

"Yes, he was my friend," he murmured.

She smiled at him. "That's good, keep your eyes peeled, some of the things around here might trigger your memories."

They went from one exhibition display to the next until they stopped in front of the Howling Commandos exhibition. The exhibition showed pictures of seven men, including Captain America and among them was none other than James Buchanan Barnes and he looked very different from the person standing next to Alaska. While he stared blankly at the picture, she was busy listing down the names of the other Howling Commandos. He followed her until they finally stopped in front of one particular exhibition, perhaps the most important one for him in the whole exhibition. It was the memorial for the man presumed killed during World War II, James Buchanan Barnes.

There was a large photograph of him that dominated the memorial. He looked blankly at the image of the man whom he was supposed to be. He didn't recognised him. The man had hair much shorter than he did now, he was clean-shaven and there was something very different about him although he couldn't tell what. Next to him, Alaska pressed a button and a voice started talking. The voice came from a small speaker and it narrated the story of James Buchanan Barnes.

"…best friends since childhood, Bucky Barnes and Steven Rogers were inseparable in both the school yard and the battlefield. Barnes is the only Howling Commando to give his life in service of his country…"

He looked down at the little screen showing a video of him, James Buchanan Barnes, standing next to Captain America or Steven Rogers, they were laughing and talking. He knew his face. He knew that his memories of Steven Rogers were compiled somewhere in his brain along with his other memories. He just didn't have the key to unlock it. Instead, he had to wait for all his memories to gradually return. He looked at the woman with him and watched as she busied herself copying the paragraph about Bucky Barnes written next to his picture.

"I want to go now," he told her, earning her attention.

She seemed stunned. She was expecting him to be eager to explore the exhibition, after all, it contained valuable information about his past but he seemed uninterested. In fact, he looked more miserable than he did before they entered the exhibition, it confused her. Wasn't it his goal to remember? Little did she knew that it was tearing him apart that he cannot remember especially when he was desperate to. Like her, he wished that seeing the memorial would trigger something and return all his memories at once and it felt very bitter that he was unable to do that.

"Okay," she closed her notebook and gave him a soft, reassuring smile.

They made their way home in complete, utter silence. He sat stiffly in his seat. He was uncomfortable with the fact that he just stepped inside a place where he could be spotted by anyone and he had her by his side. The paranoid side of him worried that Hydra had spotted him and they spotted her too. However, it seemed to be the last thing she was worried about. He guessed it was simply because she had no idea what Hydra could do to both of them.

Eventually, they arrived at the Pearl Palace and without uttering a single word to one another, they walked through the empty corridor leading to her apartment. His trained senses alerted him instantly that something was wrong even before she spotted that her front door was wide open. "Stay here," she heard him say coldly as he approached her apartment. He eyed the door that was left open. He remembered as well as her that she had locked it before they left and whoever it was who opened the door may still be inside her apartment and he was just about to find out.

 


	7. Chapter 7

The sight of the apartment's wide open door alerted both of them. It could mean many things but Alaska's companion feared for the worse…that they have been spotted by either Hydra or the authorities or both. As soon as he stepped inside her apartment, he grew even more suspicious when he saw that her apartment had been ransacked. The gasp behind him informed him that the woman failed to listen to his orders. Instead of staying outside like he asked her to, she stepped inside and quickly witnessed what happened to her apartment. She rushed deeper inside the apartment with little care for her own safety as she left her companion standing in the doorway of her ransacked apartment.

Then, Bucky heard voices. "Mom! What the hell are you doing!?" he heard Alaska shouting and instantly, he stepped further inside the apartment. He followed the voices and found Alaska confronting a woman with bleached blonde hair in her bedroom. She was skimpily dressed in an outfit that shouldn't be suitable for people her age. Next to her was a tall, scrawny man with tattoo-covered arms. "Were you stealing from me again?" Alaska asked. She sounded very hurt and betrayed as Bucky stood behind her, unsure what was going on.

"I need money, sorry kid," replied the blonde woman as she stuffed some of the cash she had stolen in her purse.

"Mom! I'm saving those, please give it back!" protested the defeated Alaska as she tried to take her mother's purse. The scrawny man was quick to push Alaska away, causing her to stumble back. "Please don't do this. Please give it back." Behind Alaska, her companion stood stiffly as he recalled another memory.

_"Please give it back!" shouted a girl with chestnut coloured hair. She was jumping up and down as a tall kid held up a necklace, keeping it out of her reach. "My big brother gave that to me! Give it back!" she was beginning to cry, letting the bully know he had prevailed._

_"Hey! Give it back to her!" shouted a voice which earned the bully's attention. The bully turned around and saw a scrawny blonde boy. Quickly, the bully handed the necklace back to the girl before fleeing like a coward. "I scared him pretty good, didn't I, Buck?" chuckled the scrawny blonde boy as he glanced at the other boy standing next to him._

_"He wasn't scared of you, Steve!" exclaimed the chestnut haired girl with a giggle. "He was scared of my big brother! He knew that Bucky will kick his ass even with his eyes closed."_

As soon as he snapped out of his trance, Bucky was greeted with the sight of Alaska being held back by the skinny, tattooed man while the woman she called her mother slapped her repeatedly across the face, calling her all sorts of insulting names. The sight angered him more than anything. He suddenly had the urge to protect Alaska at all cost.

Aggressively, he tore the scrawny, tattooed man off Alaska and threw him to the side where he landed limply like a ragdoll. He turned his attention to the woman who had stopped assaulting the woman who was meant to be her daughter. He grabbed a handful of the woman's shirt and lifted her up to the ground with ease. "Do not touch her again or you will have to answer to me," coldly, he told her as the woman looked at him in terror. There was murder in his eyes.

"Fine, take the money, take the money back!" exclaimed the woman as Alaska hurriedly took the money from her purse. As soon as he was content that she had gotten back every dollar stolen from her, he dropped the woman on the floor. She picked up her purse with tears in her eyes, her body was shaking as she rushed to her unconscious boyfriend.

"You better watch your back," warned her mother. She dragged her unconscious boyfriend out of the apartment after cursing her daughter and her 'asshole' friend.

As soon as they were out of the door, he turned to Alaska who ran up to him with her arms out. She was about to throw her arms around him to embrace him tightly as a way of displaying her gratitude but before they could touch one another, she stepped back and chewed on her bottom lip. "I'm sorry," shyly, she murmured, red faced. "Um, thanks for doing that. My mother usually finds a way to get inside my apartment and steal from me whenever she needs money to pay for her drug addiction. She would turn my place inside out just to find where I hide my savings and she'd always take her pimp with her for extra protection, I suppose."

She looked sad and every nerve in his body was tempted to pull her into his arms because he knew that he could comfort her that way but he found himself frozen in his spot as she began to clean after the mess left behind by her mother. Awkwardly, he began to help her.

* * *

After lunch, she was busy drawing and he found himself watching. It was almost therapeutic to watch her draw. During daytime, she worked as a comic book artist at home, she told him. She told him a little about the comic she had been working on, it was about an alien girl from Mars, Dejah, sent to destroy Earth and it's people but she fell in love with Earth and now, she was on a mission to save Earth from her kind who wanted it destroyed in the first place.

"Dejah was created as a weapon to destroy Earth," she explained, "however, she was initially under the impression that what she was sent to do was the right thing. She thought that by eliminating the people of Earth, she was saving her kind but really, she was only doing her master's dirty deeds and she realised this throughout the course of the story," Alaska told him as he watched her draw the alien girl, Dejah, with little trouble.

He looked at the drawing of the three-eyed alien girl from Mars. Something about the story of Dejah was familiar to him. He felt like they had a very similar story. He was created by Hydra to be their assassin, their weapon whom they sent out on missions to kill people considered as Hydra's enemies. They told him that his work was a gift to mankind. They made him believe that whenever he killed somebody, he was doing it because he was good. He was a weapon created to destroy, just like the alien girl from Alaska's comic book.

When nightfall came, Alaska left him with some home cooked dinner along with a whole list of what to and what not to do while she was away. She left to go to work although she was very hesitant to leave him on his own. For a while, Bucky was occupied watching TV but he wasn't really watching. His mind was a busy place to be as the TV blabbered on and on. He found the notebook she had taken to the Smithsonian on her desk and he found himself reading the notes she had taken from the trip, including the elaborate paragraph-long biography from James Buchanan Barnes' memorial.

He turned to a new page and took one of her pencils before he found himself writing down additional information he knew so far based on what he remembered. He wrote down names and sentences to describe little scenarios he would remember. It ranged from innocent little things such as the place where he shared his first kiss with someone to shocking things like the names he can remember of the people who were killed and how they died in the Winter Soldier's hands. Eventually, fatigue had taken over him and he fell asleep with his dinner untouched and the TV still on.

 


	8. Chapter 8

_Now, he was lying down in a hospital bed, strapped and trapped. There were doctors dressed in white gowns everywhere but they ignored him as they went on about their business. Suddenly, there was pain...seething, throbbing, horrible pain on his left arm. It was so painful and so uncomfortable._

_"Sergeant Barnes," spoke a man, as a face appeared in front of him, a man wearing glasses. Arnim Zola, he recognised him._

_He struggled violently but he was restrained and he had nowhere to go, he was strapped as Zola grinned down at him. Then the pain got worse. It was excruciating and it spread all over his body after starting on his left arm. He screamed but the pain was there…it was everywhere._

"BUCKY!" shouted a voice, waking him up as his body jolted in surprise. He felt a pair of hands shaking his shoulders aggressively.

There was a glimmer of relief in her eyes when he opened his eyes. Her brown eyes blinked back at him as she asked him if he was okay. She knew he had one of his nightmares again which involved his painful memories. He didn't say anything, instead, he raised his metal arm and wrapped his metal fingers around her neck. Instantly, he began to squeeze her neck until her eyes rolled back and her body grew limp. He threw her body aside and like a ragdoll, she flew across the room and her unconscious body landed with a noisy thud on the floor.

* * *

When Alaska opened her eyes again after who knows how long, the sight of her trashed living room greeted her almost instantly. Her bookshelf had been knocked down, a pillow had been torn apart and plenty of her little apartment decorations were scattered all over the place. Her gaze landed on the culprit, the man hunched in the corner of the room with his face buried in his hands. As she got up from the floor, she started to recall what happened to her and her shaky hand reached to touch her neck, it was very sore. "Bucky," she approached him rather cautiously. Who knows who it was she was about to encounter. It could be the violent man who had strangled her or the just the quiet man with a permanent scowl on his face.

He removed his hands from his face and looked up at her. He noticed that she was still dressed in her uniform. He guessed she must've just returned home from work before he had strangled her until she lost her unconsciousness. "Alaska."

A gasp escaped her lips upon hearing him utter her name for the first time. "I'm sorry," she wiped the tears off her eyes, "it's just that no one ever calls me Alaska, only my Dad would call me by that name," she chuckled. "I'm so used to people calling me Lassie I forgot what my actual name sounded like from someone else's lips."

He got up from the floor. He looked troubled and guilty, as if he had done something he regretted very much. "I'm sorry," he shook his head, "I did that to you," he pointed at her neck that had a faint purple bruise.

"I know you did," she trudged to the bathroom and returned a few seconds later with a washcloth. She began to pat his forehead with the cool washcloth. He closed his eyes and sighed, it was soothing and refreshing. "I also know that you weren't yourself." When he remained quiet, she continued to pat his sweaty, hot skin with the cold washcloth.

"I remembered him," he said quietly, "the man who turned me into this."

"What's his name?" she asked as she trudged to her desk. She began searching for her notebook where she had written most of her records of him. She found the notebook on the floor along with torn pieces of paper he had knocked off her desk during his rampage while she was out cold.

"Zola, Arnim Zola." She wrote the name down.

"You should rest, you look exhausted," she advised him as she looked at him worriedly.

He didn't want to close his eyes and fall back to sleep. A little part of him was fearful that the painful memories would return. He didn't want to remember the torture he had gone through under Hydra. It seemed that she sensed that he was not willing to follow her advice and go back to sleep. "Did you had dinner?" she asked him. She had spent several minutes teaching him how to use a microwave to heat up his food last night before she left for work. He shook his head in response to her question.

"I wasn't hungry."

"But you have to eat, you can't starve yourself to death," she told him. She began walking to the kitchen and for several minutes, was busy microwaving the dinner she prepared for him before she left for work last night. He listened to the quiet buzz of the machine as he sat on the sofa, still recovering.

She returned a few minutes later with food, a plate full of food for her and another for him. She handed him his' and sat next to him on the sofa to eat hers. "Eat up, food always makes me feel better, hopefully, it'll make you feel better too." She smiled. He looked at her. She had a very pretty smile, he noted. It was a simple, carefree yet so genuine smile. He copied her and ate his food using a spoon and fork. It was both familiar and strange. It was many, many, many years ago since he had last eaten like a proper human being since he had been fed like an animal during his time as the Winter Soldier.

She finished ahead of him as always and placed her empty plate down on the broken coffee table. "I think we should do some therapy for you," she announced as she looked around her living room that had been ruined as result of his violent fit. "I heard meditating helps people's brains," she claimed, "I know exactly where we can learn how to meditate."

* * *

As it turned out, she was going to take him to her friend, Willis. She drove to his house while talking about Willis animatedly. She told him about the fact that like him, Willis lost a limb during the war but in Willis' case, he served during the Vietnam War. She told him that Willis was like her second Dad. She told him plenty of things about Willis from his favourite food to the type of music he listened to. Then, she told him about Willis' wife who was 20 years younger than him. She was a yoga teacher and according to Alaska, she knew a lot about meditation. He listened to her the whole time and for once, his eyes were not fixed on the road ahead. Instead, he was watching her the whole time. The smile on her face seemed permanent and a part of him felt a sense of contentment to see it there. Her smile was the type of smile that was contagious but he hasn't smiled for so long that he had forgotten how to even if the sight of her smiling made him want to smile too. She seemed so happy and content and he thought she looked absolutely beautiful because of it.

When they arrived at Willis' residence, they were greeted inside by his wife, Amelia. Bucky recalled Alaska referring to the woman as Willis' 'trophy wife' and he noted that Alaska seemed to disapprove the woman. He had no idea what such a modern slang term meant but upon meeting Amelia, he had a faint clue what it could possibly mean. Amelia was the sort of woman who refused to age with her dyed blonde hair and wrinkle-free skin. She smelt like roses and she was dressed in an attire that flaunted her body. She was friendly and bubbly, introducing herself to Alaska's quiet friend. Amelia brought them to the living room while she talked animatedly, informing Alaska about the finished renovations. Meanwhile, from the looks of things, Alaska wasn't listening to any of Amelia's words. Bucky caught her more than a couple of times rolling her eyes as they followed Amelia to the living room.

Upon reaching the living room, Alaska ran up to the elder man with a cane and greeted him with a tight embrace. The man whom Bucky recognised as the same man from one of the framed photographs in Alaska's bookshelf, laughed as he returned her embrace. "Oho! I missed you, Lassie!" he exclaimed.

"I missed you too, Willis," grinned Alaska as she broke the embrace. She turned to look over her shoulder and beckoned Bucky to come over. "Willis, I'd like you to meet my friend, Bucky."

Willis was a man just slightly taller than Bucky but he was skinnier built in comparison to Bucky's athletic physique. He needed a cane to aid him when walking and he recalled Alaska mentioning something about her friend Willis having a prosthetic leg. He eyed Bucky up and down with narrowed eyes like how a father would eye any man near his daughter. "Where'd you meet this boy, Lassie? He's built like a football player," Willis asked with a chuckle as he continued to eye Bucky.

"The library," Alaska quickly replied, "be nice to him, please."

Willis chuckled and gave Bucky's shoulder a pat. "I will, I will," exclaimed Willis with a laugh. However, Willis wanted to know a lot of things. He was like a father interrogating his daughter's suitor. He threw questions from left to right about Alaska's companion. The whole time, it was Alaska who answered his every question. He wanted to know what he did for a living, where he lived and even where he grew up. Alaska had an answer prepared for every question. She lied so smoothly that it truly sounded the truth. "So, to what do we owe a visit from you Lassie, you were here just last week, not that I'm complaining, Amelia and I like having you around," mused Willis. He turned to Bucky, "you know, I've been trying to convince her to move out of the Pearl Palace, it's a dump but she wouldn't budge. She can't part with the place because that's where she grew up."

"It's too much effort to move," reasoned Alaska. "Anyway, Bucky and I are here because we thought that maybe Amelia can help us do some meditation."

Willis exchanged looks with Amelia, apparently stunned. "Since when did you ever need to meditate, kid?" chuckled Willis.

"I don't. Bucky does," she replied, "he's been having some nightmares, I figured meditation can help."

Amelia stepped forward, glad to see an opportunity to improve her relationship with the woman Willis treated as his daughter. "Of course, I'll be more than happy to show you guys some meditation techniques, we can even do some yoga if you like."

"No, no, I think doing some yoga is not necessary," sheepishly, Alaska refused. She tried not to giggle at the image of Bucky attempting to do yoga in her mind. If Willis refused to do yoga because the positions made him feel awkward, she could only guess that a man like Bucky would feel the same or maybe even worse.

Almost an hour later, after being shown several breathing exercises, Amelia also provided Alaska and Bucky with a whole bunch of meditating books as well as a bunch of coupons to her yoga class. With the amount of effort Amelia had put to teach them meditating techniques, it was clear that Willis' wife was eager to bond with the girl Willis saw as his daughter.

"Thanks a lot, Amelia, I'm sure Bucky is very grateful for all your help," claimed Alaska as she turned to her companion who had been quiet the entire time.

"Well should we practise some of the breathing techniques?" asked Amelia who didn't want to let Alaska go just yet, especially because it was the first time they truly spent time doing something together.

"Sure," without asking for her companion's opinion, Alaska agreed to the offer.

Amelia got up from her seat and started playing one of her relaxation CD's. The sound of waves crashing on the beach suddenly filled the room as Amelia told the pair that they can do the meditation at home without the nature sound but she recommended that it was helpful. "…now close your eyes and take a deep breath," instructed Amelia. Alaska followed the instruction immediately. Meanwhile, Bucky, unsure what was going on, kept his eyes opened and watched both women instead. They had their eyes closed and for several times, they inhaled and exhaled. He thought what they were doing was strange and almost foolish but decided not to say anything about it. Instead, his blue eyes watched Alaska the entire time as Amelia's soft soothing voice filled his ears, accompanied by the sound of the waves from her CD.

Eventually, Alaska decided that it was time for them to go. She had clearly gotten bored learning about breathing techniques and meditation and Bucky was nowhere near interested since the beginning. "Thanks again, Amelia, I appreciate all your help," she told the older woman as the couple walked Bucky and Alaska to her car.

"Oh it's nothing! You know how much I love helping you. Don't worry about it, hunny," smiled Amelia. "Oh and don't forget to come along to my birthday party next week," she said, "you're free to take Bucky along with you if you like. I'd like to hear his progress."

"Sure, sure, we'll be there-…"

"Lassie, I expect you to be there," interrupted Willis, knowing that the young woman had a tendency to cancel events that involved celebration and big crowds of people she didn't know.

"Yeah, yeah, we'll be there. Anyways, thanks, we should get home and study all these meditation books."

* * *

**hey everyone! i wanna apologize for the late update, i've been busy with uni work lately and i recently got a part time job so i often forget to visit this account and post new chapters. anyways, i'll try my very best to update weekly for all of you.**

**also, i wanna thank you guys for the feedback and the increasing number of readers. i'm pretty new to this website so i really appreciate it :)**


	9. Chapter 9

He woke up to find her busy drawing in an attempt complete her illustrations before their apparent deadline. She sat crossed-legged in her swivel chair with her fingers covered in graphite and he found himself occupying the empty chair next to her. He felt entranced as he watched her draw. She drew so effortlessly. She made the task so easy that he was almost sure he could draw just as good as her if he tried to even if he knew he won't be able to draw anything as good.

"I have to go to the post office and mail this before three," she said, "wanna come? We need to pick up some clothes for you too and probably some man stuff from the grocery store."

"Man stuff?" confused, he asked.

"Sorry," she murmured sheepishly, "I mean toiletries like razors for your beard and no offense but we need to get some deodorant for you, I mean, it's good that you finally decided to start having a shower but we should get some deodorant too," she said, blushing as she confessed. However, he didn't seem offended or affected. He just looked at her and nodded his head. He believed she knew what was best for him, he truly did. He realized that he truly trusted her. He never thought he will but she had done so much for him while he had nothing to give her in return and he decided that she deserved his trust for that reason.

"I like Dejah," he told her, pointing at the drawing of the main character of the comic series she had been drawing. She stopped what she was doing and looked at him with a smile on her face.

"I'm glad you like her. You and her are sort of the same, I realised."

"Yes, I noticed that too," he agreed quietly as he thought about the alien character of the comic book who was under the impression that she was helping her kind by destroying Earth only to realise that the act she was about to commit was evil. They were almost the same. He was manipulated by Hydra to think that his missions were a 'gift to humanity' when in reality, his missions caused nothing but destruction and death.

Later, before three in the afternoon, they left her apartment and walked to the post office just a few blocks away for her to send her finished comic book illustrations. Afterwards, she took him to one of the local thrift stores where she would shop for her clothes. "Hello, Lassie," greeted the elderly storekeeper who knew her as a regular. "Who's the fine young man with you. Is he your boyfriend?" inquired the woman.

The comment made her cheeks red while it left her companion completely speechless. "No! No, Beth, he's just a good friend of mine," she admitted. She turned to Bucky and motioned for him to follow her even before Beth could ask any more questions.

They stopped in the men's section and she told him to pick whatever he liked and that it was her treat after he washed the dishes and helped clean her apartment. Awkwardly, he picked random clothes while she made her way to the women's section. When she returned to see his progress, he noticed that she had picked up a single clothing for herself, a dress. "Do you wanna try them on to see if they fit?" she asked him.

"I think they will all fit," he predicted. She asked him if he was sure and he nodded his head.

"I'll just try this dress on to see if it fits me, I hope you don't mind," she said, showing him the dress she had picked for herself. He shook his head. He followed her to the dressing room and waited for her outside the cubicle with a pile of clothes in his hands.

He waited patiently and a few minutes passed before he heard her unlock the cubicle door and she stepped out, dressed in a red floral tea dress. Bucky caught his breath in awe the moment he saw her. She looked like a proper lady from the 1940s. The sight of her made him feel like he was back in the past but she was nothing like the women he remembered from his past. The dress suited her perfectly and it fit her like a glove but above all, it made her completely breathtaking. Bucky never realised how beautiful his companion was until that very moment.

"How do I look?" she asked as she twirled around while looking at her reflection in the mirror behind him. He was speechless and he was somehow nervous that he would stutter if he spoke. "Bucky?"

He blinked back at her. She noticed that his permanent frown had vanished and he looked as if he was stupified. "You look good," he replied stiffly, she smiled at his compliment, although, he felt like the word 'good' was not the perfect way to describe her. "I'm sorry, what I mean is that you look beautiful." Instantly, the apples of her cheeks turned the same colour as her dress after hearing the rest of his compliment.

"T-Thanks," it was her who ended up stuttering. Clearing her throat, she trudged back inside the cubicle to get changed back into her clothes. "Willis and Amelia expects me to turn up to Amelia's birthday party. You can come along too if you like. In fact, you should totally go so that I would have someone to talk to," he heard her speak from inside the cubicle.

"Okay," he replied. He didn't care about attending the party and mingling with strangers, instead, a part of him was almost positive that he was only agreeing because he wanted to see her in the red dress again.

They paid for the cheap, second-hand clothes and made their way to the grocery store next. They picked up the items on her list such as milk, eggs, laundry detergent and so on. One thing she noticed about her companion when they were in a crowded place was that he seemed more aware than ever, as if he was expecting an enemy to come and attack him anytime. She guessed it was part of his training as a soldier to be alert of his surrounding and it just stuck by. Not once did it crossed her mind that he was cautious that anyone from Hydra or the authorities would catch him with her. She paid for the items and they left the grocery store with Bucky carrying most of the items simply because he volunteered to despite her assurance than she can carry a couple of things. He had been raised a gentleman by his mother and his sister Rebecca had always reminded him to be one back in his youthful days.

The sight of the Pearl Palace soon came into view. There was a man smoking outside the building and they ignored him on their way inside. "Lassie!" the man called, attempting to earn Alaska's attention. She continued on, ignoring him. "Hey, frosty lady, who's your boyfriend?" he sneered at her.

Alaska spun around and faced the man whom she instantly glared at hatefully. "Don't call me that!" Bucky was just as taken off guard as the man when she raised her voice. She sounded very angry.

"What's wrong?" grinned the man, "it's true anyway, you're the frosty lady, aren't ya, Lassie?" he teased.

She suddenly looked distressed and Bucky took note of it. "Piss off," she muttered, her voice laced with venom and anger.

It was weird to see her upset. She looked so precious and defenceless that all he can think of were ways he could protect her. She was being verbally bullied right before him. He recalled Rebecca's and Steve's bullies and how much he despised them. He hated bullies but unlike the case with Rebecca and Steve, it wasn't his big brother instinct urging him to come to Alaska's aid. It was both the soldier and Bucky within him that hated to see her hurt. It wasn't his big brother instinct but his general instinct instead that told him it was wrong to see Alaska hurt. He turned to the man who had been verbally harassing her as he dropped the bags he'd been holding. Before Alaska's very eyes, she watched in shock when Bucky punched the man with his left metal arm hidden beneath his long sleeve and glove. He sent him flying and he did it with very little effort because there would be a possibility of killing the man if he used his full effort on him. The man got up weakly and looked at him in horror.

"What the fuck are you?" he asked. "You're just a freak too! Aren't you? You're just like her!" he exclaimed before running away in fear for his own safety. Stunned by what the man just said, Bucky turned to look at Alaska but she had gone inside the Pearl Palace.

All she said was a glum 'thank you' when he found her in the apartment. The man's words had clearly affected her but she pretended it didn't by busying herself with chores.

He thought about the man's words, he called her and him a freak. Perhaps one could apply that word to him because of his bionic arm even if the man he punched with it didn't see that a metal fist had punched him. However, Bucky cannot understand why the man had referred to Alaska as a freak. She was far from it. He figured the man was just being an asshole. She was not a freak, he thought and he made himself believe that.

 


	10. Chapter 10

The confrontation with Jim from apartment number 2 or as Bucky liked to think, the jerk who called them a freak had been forgotten a few days later. Alaska seemed to have moved on from it and so he did as well. During the next few days that followed, they collected several more information about his past identity. He was a puzzle and they were on a mission to arrange and solve that puzzle. They visited the local library a few times to gather more information, especially since they had a few names to look up which included not only Captain America's name or the members of Hydra responsible for the creation of the Winter Soldier but also Rebecca Barnes and the rest of Bucky's family. They didn't find much about his immediate family, they were all deceased and he had already visited their graves when he had gone to Brooklyn. However, they gathered several more information regarding the other people in their list and the information they gained was helpful in piecing the puzzle together. So far, the puzzle was nowhere near completion, it was a work in progress.

Usually, at night, he'd wake up shaky and sweaty with his heart racing because he would either remember the torture and the excruciating pain he had gone through to become the Winter Soldier or he would remember a memory from his past whether it was his childhood or years before his deployment to the war. Sometimes, he would remember his time as the Winter Soldier through his dreams. He remembered his victims, each and everyone of them as much as he remembered every single torture and pain he had gone through in the hands of Hydra's doctors and scientists.

Alaska would always return from work and she would either find him screaming and shaking while he slept or he would be awake with his face buried in his hands, shaking like a leaf. So far, there hasn't been any more violent fits. She was there to comfort him whether it meant bringing him a glass of water, wiping away the sweat off his brows with a cold washcloth or following the breathing technique instruction from Amelia's meditation books. He would calm down much quicker and his heart rate would slow down as a result.

* * *

He stared at his reflection in the mirror. He had gained more courage to look at his reflection now despite the fact that all he could see was a murderer blinking back at him whenever he saw his own reflection. Quietly, he busied himself with the task of shaving his beard using the razor Alaska had gotten for him at the grocery store. Memories of his boyhood reminded him how to do the task. He recalled the times when he would watch his father in utter amazement whenever he shaved. The task was not as smooth and easy as he had anticipated and by the end of it, he had a few cuts. While he wiped the blood off with some toilet paper, he saw another reflection in the mirror.

"Did you nick yourself?" she asked with a small smile on her face as she stood in the doorway.

"I-I got it under control," he told her quickly. He didn't want her to think that he was incapable of doing such a simple task like shaving.

She nodded her head. "Okay but are you really sure you don't mind coming tonight?" he turned to face her, she was dressed in her robe with her hair in a towel. Her scent was overpowering and strong but he didn't mind, he liked the smell of berry and vanilla which was the way she smelled.

"No," he assured her. She nodded her head and smiled shyly.

"Okay, well I'll give you some privacy then," she backed out and trudged to her bedroom.

Some time later, Bucky waited patiently for his companion. He was dressed in his new clothes, clean-shaven and extra squeaky clean just for the evening. He glanced at the clock. It was almost seven in the evening. Upon hearing her bedroom door open, he glanced to the direction of her bedroom. "Sorry to keep you waiting," sheepishly, she said as Bucky stood up from his seat. Initially, he didn't even realise that he had been holding his breath at the sight of her.

She was dressed in the red, floral tea dress she had purchased a few days ago and she rocked it just as beautifully as she did in the dressing room. His blue eyes scanned her from head to toe. She wore her dark hair in a double bun, revealing the shape of her face. Her lips were red and her cheeks rosier. The dress accentuated the shape of her body and it stopped just above her knee. His eyes followed her legs until his gaze landed on the pair of brown, leather boots she wore. Little did he know that while he eyed the woman standing just a few steps away from him, she was doing the same to him.

It was almost weird to see him without his signature scowl. She thought he looked less recognisable without his beard but it was only because she was so used to seeing him with facial hair. It revealed his defined jawline and cheekbones. She smiled appreciatively upon noticing that he wore his red, long sleeve shirt. It was a little tight for him and as a result, it highlighted his athletic torso. He wore gloves too, concealing his hands. Finally, her gaze lingered on his legs that filled his jeans very well. She looked back up at his face and realised he had been looking at her from head to toe too. It made Alaska's cheeks red and awkwardly, she cleared her throat. "Are you ready?" she asked, causing him to look back at her face.

"Yes," he replied. "You look beautiful," he told her what he had been itching to tell her.

"Thank you," shyly, she smiled. "You look very handsome too."

They made their way to Willis and Amelia's house afterwards. She drove there while talking about Willis animatedly. He listened to her the whole time and for once, his eyes were not fixed on the road ahead. Instead, he was watching her the whole time. The smile on her face seemed permanent and he loved seeing it there. Her smile was the type of smile that was contagious but he hasn't smiled for so long that he had forgotten how to even if the sight of her smiling made him want to smile too. She seemed so happy and content and he thought she looked absolutely beautiful because of that.

Willis and Amelia's house was packed and the noise could be heard from a block away when Alaska and Bucky finally arrived. They were greeted by Amelia who was dressed for the occasion in a tight-fitting cocktail dress with a half empty glass of champagne in one hand. She left sloppy kisses on both their cheeks, leaving behind lipstick stains on their skin. "I'm glad you two came!" she exclaimed, clearly tipsy from the alcohol as she turned to look at Bucky. "You know, she never leaves her apartment to socialise. Lassie is a little hermit," she giggled as Alaska frowned at the older woman's words, unimpressed.

Willis soon came over to greet them, much to Alaska's relief. He led both Alaska and Bucky to the backyard where the party was being held while Amelia greeted more of the newly arrived guests. It wasn't long before Bucky found himself left behind with Willis as soon as one of the other guests, an elderly man, asked Alaska for a dance. "She's beautiful, ain't she?" Willis nudged him, "some of the old dogs I know have a crush on her. They wanted a dance with her. Look at Parker now, the old bastard's having the time of his life dancing with her," he claimed as he handed Bucky a bottle of ice cold beer which he awkwardly accepted not knowing what it was.

Bucky looked on, ignoring the drink he held. There were a few people dancing on the dance floor including Alaska and the man Willis referred to as Parker. His blue eyes were fixed on her the entire time. She was talking to the older man she had been dancing with and at one point, she laughed. He could hear the sound of her laughter and he watched as she threw her head back as she giggled at a joke the older man had told her. Both Bucky and Willis watched the two dance. Willis observed how fixated the younger man was towards Alaska. "You know, kid," Willis started, "if you want to dance with Lassie you gotta make the move and ask her or you won't get the chance to because the old dog won't give you the chance to," laughed Willis.

For once, Bucky felt his cheeks reddened. He said nothing but Willis realised that he had taken his advice when he saw Bucky approach Alaska as soon as Parker let her go, ditching his untouched beer along the way. The older man watched on with a smile on his face. On the dance floor, Bucky stopped in front of the woman he had been watching the entire night. For once, he felt very nervous and he didn't recall ever being nervous before. "Maybe we could dance together?" awkwardly, he suggested. She looked up at him, wide-eyed. She didn't expect his offer but the big smile on her face relieved him because it told him what her answer was even before she could utter it.

"Of course," she giggled.

He closed the gap between them and wrapped one arm around her waist while his other hand reached for one of hers. They were so close and her scent was so overpowering that he could smell her. He looked down at her face. She was smiling softly at him. Her smile was so contagious that as he looked down at her, he felt his lips curl upwards. The sight only made her smile wider. She had been so used to seeing him with his scowl that it was very refreshing to see him smile. He looked so handsome that she blushed at the thought of it.

They danced to the slow beat of the music. Tommy James & The Shondells' 'Crimson and Clover' was playing loudly and the whole time their eyes were locked. There was a twinkle in her big, brown eyes and for once, the pain within his blue eyes disappeared as he looked down at her. He had momentarily forgotten his troubles as he danced with her. In that very moment, all he saw was her. He wasn't Bucky or the Winter Soldier…he was just a man dancing with a beautiful woman with a contagious smile. "I'm glad destiny brought you to me, Bucky," she whispered softly and if he didn't have enhanced hearing, he wouldn't have heard her speak through the loud music.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close for an embrace. Her soft, supple body fit perfectly against his hard, muscled one. They had stopped dancing and they didn't even realise it as they remained in their spot, embracing one another. He closed his eyes. Her embrace was comforting and calming. "Lassie," he called her softly, prompting her to break the hug.

She looked up at him and smiled. "Yes?"

He didn't say anything, instead, he simply smiled back at her. He was breathtakingly handsome especially with a smile on his face. Without considering her actions, she got on her tippy toes and pressed a kiss on his lips. The contact was electric but as soon as her lips brushed against his, she realised what she had done and sheepishly pulled away. "I'm so sorry, I-I got carried away-…"

Without letting her finish, Bucky leaned down and met her lips with his. His arms automatically wrapped around her waist as he kissed her. Nothing else mattered in that very moment. Everything else was perfect.

 


	11. Chapter 11

_"Longing. Rusted. Seventeen. Daybreak. Furnace._ _Nine. Benign. Homecoming. One. Freight Car," spoke a voice. "Good morning, Soldier. I have a mission for you."_

_He looked up at the man standing before him. Vasily Karpov, he recognized him. "Ready to comply," coldly, he replied._

_Karpov had given him his mission and it was expected of him to get the job done. He was given a name. Howard Stark._

Bucky woke up to the sound of his own screams. The last thing he saw before he had woken up was the sight of Maria Stark's dead face after he had strangled her to death with his own bare hand. "Bucky?" spoke a voice as Alaska's face loomed above. She was looking down at him with a worried expression on her face. "Breath, Bucky. Remember Amelia's breathing technique?" she instructed him quietly as he shut his eyes and listened to her soft, soothing voice instruct him to inhale and exhale several times until he felt his heart rate slow down. "What did you remember?" she asked him once he was calm.

"I don't want to remember anymore," defeated, he admitted. He was so vulnerable that she felt sympathy for him as she looked at the agony in his eyes.

Bucky felt her wrap her arms around him. "I'm sorry that this is happening to you, I really am," she whispered, "but remembering the horrible memories is part of the process. We can't solve this puzzle if you give up now. You can't give up, Bucky."

"Why do you care so much?" he asked, still completely confused what her real intention was but at the same time, he was suspicious.

"Because I care about you," admitted Alaska. "I want you to restore your identity and you can't do that if you can't remember who you were and you will need your memories for that."

She picked up her notebook and a pile of other things from her desk before she cleared one of her walls. He watched quietly as she began to stick newspaper clippings, excerpts of important files and photographs on the wall. They were all about him or related and connected to him. There was a photograph of Steve Rogers before and after the serum. There was a photograph of him, as James Buchanan Barnes and as the Winter Soldier. There were newspaper clippings and photocopied newspaper pages from the World War II era ranging from articles talking about him being a 3-time YMCA welterweight boxing champion to articles reporting his 'death' after falling off a moving train. She stuck on the wall all the information and data she had collected from the library after finding out about his identity. Eventually, she began taking out the pages of her notebook and stuck them on the wall too. She turned her attention to him afterwards with a proud look on her face as if she just achieved something big.

"This is our Bucky wall," she told him, pointing at the wall behind her. "From now on, every time we get information about you from the present or the past, we'll put it up here. This is how detectives do it in the movies when they assemble clues to find answers," she said with a grin, "that way, we can keep track of everything and have a record of everything while at the same time, it will remind you that your life wasn't always so bad and I hope it will motivate you to want to work hard to restore it so you don't lose hope when you remember the bad things because this wall will remind you of the good things too."

He looked at her creation then at her. "Thank you," he told her. It was the first time he had ever thanked her for her kindness and he truly meant it. He was very thankful. She smiled in response.

"Come on, I'll make breakfast then I'll teach you how to use the vacuum cleaner after." He held her back, stopping her from leaving. "Is there something on my face?" she asked nervously, wondering why he was looking at her so intently. She was used to his hard gaze but the look on his face at the moment was very different to the one she was accustomed to. He replied to her question by pressing his lips against hers. He relaxed against her as soon as their lips touched. In that very moment, he wasn't the assassin who had killed so many people for Hydra or Bucky from Brooklyn. He was just a man kissing a woman who made him feel at ease.

"Thank you," he told her again after the short kiss they shared. She looked at him with hazy eyes and smiled.

"No, thank you," she told him before planting a quick kiss on his forehead. She dragged him up and they both made their way to the kitchen.

* * *

After starting the morning with a big breakfast, she proceeded to teach Bucky how to use a vacuum cleaner. There were already vacuum cleaners during his time but Bucky never had to do such chore back in the day. As well as that, the vacuum cleaners back in the way weren't as complicated as the vacuum cleaner Alaska owned. In the end, it was Alaska who ended up vacuuming with Bucky doing all the lifting of the furniture. It's a team effort, she said before she congratulated him for successfully doing the chore.

She was soon engrossed drawing an upcoming issue for the comic book while Bucky looked in fascination at the photographs captured during their night at Amelia's birthday party. He had been looking over and over and over again at the five photographs since Alaska had showed it to him yesterday. The first photograph was of Alaska with Willis and Amelia, the second had Bucky with the couple, the third was Alaska with a few of the old men who allegedly had a crush on her, the fourth was Alaska and Bucky sitting together with his arm over her shoulders and the last was of the two of them dancing. He never wanted to forget about the dance they shared that night and a little part of him was fearful that he would forget it one day as easily as he had forgotten his identity.

He glanced at Alaska. She was busy drawing, unaware that he was looking at her. Bucky hoped that he would never forget her and he feared that he would. She was too special and important for him now. He cannot allow himself to forget about her.

"Do you wanna come with me to the grocery store?" she asked a couple of hours later as she abandoned her swivel chair.

He simply nodded his head. He didn't really need anything. He simply agreed because he wanted to be in her company. They left her apartment afterwards, hand in hand. They walked to the grocery store and the entire way, she animatedly talked about the current plot of the comic book she'd been working on. At the grocery store, he carried the basket while she led the way from one aisle to another until they have completed the items on her list.

"Excuse me," spoke a little voice as Bucky felt someone pull the hem of his shirt. He looked behind him and saw a little girl no older than six looking at up him. "I lost my Mommy, will you help me find her?"

He looked down at the little girl, he was a little taken aback that out of everyone in the crowded grocery store, she chose to approach him. "Uh," he looked around, his gaze landing on Alaska who was watching him with a small smile on her face.

"We'll help you find her, forgive my friend, he's a little shy," Alaska came to his aid as she approached the little girl. "What's your name, sweetie?" she asked, her voice soft and comforting.

"Macy," the little girl replied.

"Well Macy, I'm Lassie and my shy friend over there is Bucky," she introduced themselves. "I'll tell you what, why don't we go to the front counter and see if your Mommy is there waiting for you," she offered her hand to the little girl who reached out and held it instantly. While they walked to the front counter, Alaska and the little girl talked. The girl seemed comfortable in her company and was not at all afraid. Bucky watched the interaction, entranced. Bucky guessed it was her effect on people.

By the time they got to the front counter, there was no sign of the girl's mother and after exchanging words with the manager, Alaska got the manager to announce that there was a lost child over the speaker. A minute later and a hysterical mother was reunited with her child. Bucky and Alaska watched the interaction unfold before the mother turned to them and thanked them over and over again.

They left the grocery store afterwards with Bucky carrying most of the grocery bags. "You'll be a good mother," he commented, his comment prompted her to glance his way.

"You think so?" she asked, as if she doubted it would be possible.

"I know so," he admitted as he smiled down at her. He noticed the way her cheeks seemed redder now and it only made him smile wider.

A few minutes later and the Pearl Palace came into view. Alaska led the way inside the building with Bucky following her closely. She stopped in front of her door and fished for her keys while she asked Bucky what he wanted for dinner. Her voice faltered when she unlocked the door and pushed it open only to be greeted with the sight of her ransacked apartment. Instantly, she rushed inside the house without even waiting for Bucky and ran to the direction of her bedroom.

He found her sitting on the floor, holding an empty jewellery box. "She took it," she whispered shakily when he found her. Her room had been turned inside out and whoever ransacked it had been very determined to find what they were looking for.

"What? Did she take your money again?" Bucky asked as he approached her. The room had gotten chilly somehow and as he approached her, his stomach lurched when she began to sob. She was crying and it tore him apart to see her broken. Bucky wasn't exactly sure why he suddenly felt that way.

"No, no," she shook her head in response to his question, "she took my Dad's ring. She stole it from me," she said between sobs as Bucky reached forward to touch her. As soon as his hand came in contact with her, he was overwhelmed by the fact that she was so cold as if he was touching ice.

His blue eyes grew wide however when he saw the state of his right hand. It was suddenly frozen. The hand he had touched her with was covered in frost. He looked at it in horror. The coldness reminded him of the times Hydra would put him in cryo-freeze. He looked down at Alaska in horror and found the floor where she was sitting to be just as frozen as his hand. "What are you?" shakily, he asked her.

 


	12. Chapter 12

Bucky looked at his frozen right hand then at the woman on the floor then back at his frozen right hand. "What the hell are you?" he demanded shakily. The temperature of the room had dropped significantly and he could see frost that started to crawl from the floor all the way to the walls.

Weakly, she got up from the floor and faced him. Her puffy eyes blinked back at him and he could tell she was scared. The way she was shaking told him she was not shaking from the cold but from fear. "I'm sorry," she reached for his frost covered arm but Bucky avoided her touch. He wanted an answer.

"Answer me! What the hell are you?" he demanded.

"I'm a freak," she replied in a little voice, "just like what Jim said." He remembered the bully he had punched just several days ago in front of the Pearl Palace. Tim had called both of them freaks and he never understood why he would refer to her as such but now he was given a reason why. "I was born like this and often I can control it but when my emotions get out of hand, I lose control and things like that happen," she pointed at his frozen hand, referring to it.

She left Bucky's prostate form in the room and returned a few seconds later with a hairdryer in hand. For the next several minutes that followed, she blow-dried his frosty hand and the only noise in the entire place came from the noisy hairdryer. When the ice melted, she looked up at him only to see him scowling at her with an expectant look on his face. Apparently, he was waiting for her to elaborate on her earlier answer to his question. He needed more explanation than the one she had given him. She placed the hairdryer aside and motioned for him to sit on the bed. "When I was born, my skin was so cold that the midwife thought that I was a dead baby so it left everyone pretty astonished when they found a heartbeat. The midwife even made a joke about it and asked my mother if her womb was as cold as the Alaskan winter. That's where my name came from," she started as she began cleaning up the mess in her room.

"My mother, a prostitute, tracked down one of her clients and took me to him. I was a burden to her. She can't do her nightjob when she had a baby to look after. My father took me and he remained in contact with my mother simply because he wanted me to grow up knowing I have a mother. My mother stayed in contact with him because he was a source of cash for her," she recounted, "I grew up with my Dad. Everyone knew my Dad as Seth the Polar Bear because he was built like a bear and like me, his body temperature was cold. My Dad can do stuff that no ordinary people can, he can freeze things and I quickly learned that I can too. We were special, he told me. We weren't like Captain America or you for instance who were transformed by some serum, we were born with our ability, it's in our blood, our DNA."

"Although my Dad never told me, I knew he hated his abilities. People called him a freak behind his back. He didn't belonged anywhere and it troubled him. I guess that led to his suicide," she wiped a tear away and Bucky was more than tempted to wipe the tears off her eyes for her but he didn't. "My Dad, he taught me how to control the cold when I started to get bullied while I was growing up. They called me the frosty lady and they called me a freak like my father. By controlling my abilities, I was able to blend in most of the time and I still do now. When he passed away, I received a letter from a man named Charles Xavier and he called me a mutant. He offered a place for me in his special school for people like myself and in his letter, he explained that all mutants like myself and my father have some sort of genetic mutation and as result, it caused our bodies to develop abilities that regular humans are unable to. He mentioned that before I was born, he offered my father a spot in his school but my Dad declined."

Bucky watched her open a drawer and she pulled out a big bundle of envelopes. "He sends me a letter every month and he said he will continue to do so until I accept his offer," she explained as she showed Bucky the envelopes containing Charles Xavier's letters. "I never accepted his offer because my Dad always told me never to trust anybody when it comes to our inhuman abilities. He told me that many people take advantage of people like us while some who are afraid of what they don't understand, want us dead. My Dad didn't trust Charles Xavier so I don't as well."

"In one of his earlier letters, Charles Xavier wrote down his suspicion that my Dad didn't commit suicide and that someone killed him instead. I don't know what to make of that theory to be honest," she chewed on her bottom lip. "Please don't be afraid of me, Bucky, just because I'm like this," she sounded afraid now as she looked at him tearfully. "I never had any real friends other than Willis because everybody else feared the frosty lady," in a little voice, she added.

He got up from his seat and approached her before he pulled her in his arms. He never thought he'd see her look so vulnerable. Between the two of them, he always thought she was the stronger one but here she was, crumbling apart before him. It was almost strange that the woman who had been helping him solve his problems had problems of her own. She was just as troubled as him and the only difference was that she was good at concealing it. "I'm not afraid," he told her, "and I won't leave you. You are more than just a friend to me, Alaska. You're very important to me. You were there when I needed to be saved and I'll be here for you."

She sniffed against his chest and hugged him back tightly. He wasn't normal like her and perhaps that was the reason why she empathised with him. She knew what it felt like to be so disconnected to the world. "Thank you," he heard her murmur against his chest as he pressed a kiss on top of her head. Her temperature was much warmer now and a lot normal than her temperature from earlier. He predicted she was able to control herself again.

"What did your mother stole from you this time?" Bucky asked her. He didn't forget the initial issue that made her upset in the first place.

"My father's ring," she sniffed. "She probably pawned it already, I won't be able to get it back, I just have to move on now." She sounded so defeated that it angered Bucky that her own mother would do such a dirty act on her own daughter.

"I'll find it," he told her simply, it was a promise. He held her face in his hands and kissed her. As his lips brushed tenderly against her own, he felt her body tremble against him. Eagerly, she wrapped her shaky arm around his neck and pulled him close to her until their bodies were pressed against each other.

As the kiss deepened, they both landed on her bed and the mattress squeaked noisily from their combined weight. With him on top of her, he pinned her on the bed with his body as his tongue found its way inside her mouth. He could still taste the grapes she had been taste-testing at the grocery store in her mouth and it was one of those things that made everything he had gone through with her so real and memorable. They were both panting heavily for air after the kiss and without letting her recover, Bucky planted butterfly kisses down her neck. A soft, quiet moan escaped her lips in reaction to Bucky's sudden actions. The sound of her soft moan pleased him as his hands began to undo the buttons of her shirt.

She didn't say or do anything to stop him. Instead, she encouraged him by helping him undo her shirt. Bucky remembered being with some women in the past but he never wanted something as bad as he did in that very moment. In a matter of minutes, she was clad merely in her underwear with her clothes discarded on the floor. Bucky's shirt and gloves eventually followed and for the first time, she saw his naked torso. Her gaze lingered on the painful looking scars adorning the spot where his metal arm was connected to his flesh. Shakily, she let her fingertips touch the scars and he watched her do so. She didn't look at his scars in disgust, in fear or in fascination. She looked at it the same way she would look at the rest of him…it was the same way he remembered his mother would look at his father…she looked at him with nothing but pure love in her eyes.

"We don't have to do this if you don't want to," he told her hoarsely.

She turned her gaze away from his scars and diverted it towards his face. She smiled softly at him as she cupped his cheeks with her hands. His stubble grazed her palms and her palms felt warm against his skin. "No, I want this," she told him softly with a small, assuring smile on her face. "Do you? I mean, you're like almost a hundred years old, you might not be able to keep up with me," she said jokingly.

For the first time, she heard him laugh. Although it was brief, the sound of his chuckles made the butterflies in her stomach soar. She felt like she accomplished something big knowing she made him laugh. "We'll just have to find out," he whispered against her face and before she could say any more of her witty comebacks, he silenced her with his lips.

* * *

**hey guys, thanks so much for the reviews and i tried to update as soon as i can. keep the goodness coming and drop some reviews to let me know what you think of this chapter :)**

**anyways, a little note: i know the Marvel Cinematic Universe don't acknowledge mutants and they call them something else since they don't have the rights to it and all that legal drama but i just wanna use the idea here since this is just fanfiction anyway so i might as well combine universes...**

**in case you're wondering, i won't elaborate much on the x-men universe or anything like that in this story, i only used charles xavier and alaska's mutation to develop her background...and i promise it will make sense why i referred to the x-men universe in this story when we get to the very last chapter**

**i hope that i explained myself clearly but just let me know if you guys need more explanations :) and stay tuned for the next chapter**


	13. Chapter 13

There were no memories or nightmares and for the first time, Bucky woke up feeling very refreshed. He felt like he truly slept well. He glanced at the woman next to him and smiled. She was still dressed in her uniform and he guessed she had snuck out to go to work some time during the night while he was asleep and returned by his side in the early hours of the morning. Carefully, he lifted up her arm around him and left the bed. He spent the next several minutes that followed tidying up her ransacked apartment by putting everything back in place. Afterwards, he slipped out of her apartment, leaving her fast asleep in her bed.

When Alaska had woken up, she was alone in bed with no sign of Bucky. She began to worry and wondered where he had gone to and why he left without warning. She had no idea how long he had been gone and she found herself unable to do anything. Instead, she sat on the sofa the entire time, anticipating his return. The TV was on and it kept her company but she didn't pay attention to it. Instead, her gaze was glued to the door the entire time.

Around noon, when she took a break from waiting and her rumbling stomach led her to the kitchen, she heard the sound of the front door open. She abandoned her sandwich and rushed to see who it was who entered her apartment. She had never been so relieved to see Bucky. She ran up to him and leaped into his arms as he chuckled at her enthusiasm. "Where have you been? I was so worried," she claimed as she looked up at him.

He didn't say anything, instead, he handed her the bright pink Geraniums he had plucked from her neighbour's garden. "I, uh, stole them from the garden next door."

She giggled as she wrapped her arms around him. "Aren't you romantic," she joked.

"Actually, I got this for you," he reached for one of her hands and placed something on her palm.

Her eyes widened in shock when she realised what it was on her palm. "B-Bucky…how?" he asked as she looked at the stolen ring he retrieved for her. It was one of her most valuable possession and the person who had stolen it, her mother, knew about its sentimental value as well as its monetary value.

"I paid your mother a visit, she's more than eager to give it back actually," smiled Bucky and she couldn't help but giggle at the mischievous glint in his eyes.

She looked at the ring. "This ring was my grandmother's engagement ring that my grandfather had given her. She gave the ring to my Dad in hopes that he can give it to his future wife but my Dad never married," she explained as she eyed the diamond ring. "You should keep it, I'm giving it to you. It's all yours to give to whoever you want to give it to."

"Then keep it because I want you to have it," Bucky replied simply, leaving Alaska speechless. He took the ring from her hand and slipped it on her ring finger like how he remembered the character do from the movie they watched a few nights ago.

"I don't know if it's the same in the 1940s but when the man give the woman a ring and places it on her ring finger, it means that he's asking her to marry him," she started as Bucky reached to cup her chin, forcing her to look up at him. His blue eyes found her big, brown eyes and he smiled at the sight of her. It was a sight he would never get tired of, not when he was very fond of her smiling face.

"I think it's the same, at least, from what I can remember," he admitted. "Are you willing to marry me one day, Alaska?"

Instantly, her face turned into a bright shade of red. She looked very shocked and bashful at the same time. "O-One day?" she repeated, Bucky nodded his head. "O-Of course!" red-faced, Alaska exclaimed almost excitedly as she threw her arms around him. Someone close to Alaska like Willis would often say that she was notorious at making impulsive decisions but somehow, she truly believed that she was not making an impulsive decision when she accepted Bucky's proposal…no, it was meant to be. "I truly believe that destiny brought you to me for a lot of reasons, Bucky and this is one of them," she admitted as she cupped his cheeks, his stubbles grazed her palms as a result.

"I believe it brought you to me so that you can save me," he uttered, truly believing what came out of his mouth. He looked into her eyes and felt less pain. He had momentarily forgotten the agony that his memories had brought him. In that very moment, he was just a man with a very special woman in his arms. With their gaze still locked, he leaned forward until his lips brushed against her soft, warm lips. Suddenly, he was more than content. He had forgotten what it felt like to be home when Hydra had broken him but perhaps being home felt the same when he was with her.

The following day, Bucky woke up surrounded by Alaska's familiar scent of vanilla and berries. The first thing his blue eyes caught sight of was the Geraniums he had picked from the neighbour's garden that was now in a vase on top of the bedside table. Rolling on his other side, he caught sight of Alaska sitting up and occupied reading a book. "You don't have work?" sleepily, he wondered out loud as he reached forward to rub his metal, left arm against her bare back. She placed her book on her lap and turned to look at him with a wide smile.

"No, someone swapped their shift with me so I'm taking the early shift tonight," she replied as she hastily lied back down in the bed, inching close to him until their bare bodies were pressed together under the sheets.

"What were you reading?" he wondered out loud as he rubbed his eyes. He reached for the book she had put aside with his free hand as his metal arm remained wrapped around her. He read the title of the book and glanced at Alaska with an eyebrow raised. "Dracula?"

"It's my favourite book," she admitted, "and one day, I'm going to Romania to visit Dracula's castle," she declared. "Maybe I'll take you with me, what do you think?" she smiled as she pressed a kiss on his cheek, his stubble grazed her lips.

"Romania," he repeated, "maybe we'll have our honeymoon in that castle, what do you think?" he grinned as she giggled while her face turned into a bright shade of red.

"I don't think we're allowed to do that," sheepishly, she informed him, "but I'm totally in if we're going to go to Romania for our honeymoon one day."

"Fine," smiled Bucky, "we'll be going to Romania one day, you and me."

"Alright, I like the sound of that," she grinned back at him.

* * *

Later that morning, the TV was on and it was showing Family Guy re-runs when Bucky heard the sound of Alaska's voice calling him from the direction of the bathroom. "…can you please go to the kitchen and search the grocery bag on the kitchen counter for the shampoo," she said, "I sort of forgot to bring it to the bathroom and I need it now."

Bucky had been busy attempting to fix the broken toaster before she interrupted him. He put the task aside, leaving behind the toaster and the screw driver on the coffee table before he trudged to the kitchen to follow her request. He found the grocery bag she had been talking about on the kitchen counter and dug around for a while in search for the bottle of shampoo. He found a purple bottle labelled 'shampoo' and trudged to the direction of the bathroom afterwards. He could still hear the water running and predicted she was still inside the shower.

A few seconds later and Alaska was taken off guard when someone opened the shower curtains and there stood Bucky with the shampoo bottle. Automatically, the bashful woman covered her chest with her hands and crossed her legs. "Jesus, Bucky, can't you knock?" she demanded bashfully as she snatched the shampoo bottle off him using one hand while the other covered her breasts.

He chuckled as his blue eyes scanned her up and down repeatedly. He was still a man after all and like every man attracted to the opposite sex, the sight of a naked woman was always enjoyable. "I've seen you without your clothes on plenty of times," he smiled at her as his blue eyes finally landed on her face, he took notice of her bright red face almost instantly, "there's nothing to hide from me, Alaska."

If it was possible, her face turned an even brighter shade of red. "Whatever, can you please leave, I would like to finish up unless you have plans on joining me."

A split second later and Bucky's clothes were discarded on the bathroom floor as he stepped in the shower while Alaska gawked at him, unable to believe that he had stepped in the shower. "What?" he asked with an eyebrow raised, "you offered."

It took only a few seconds before his hair was wet and his body was covered with droplets of water. At one point, Alaska had gotten on her tippy toes and applied some shampoo to his hair, it smelt like berries, like her. He reciprocated the action as soon as she had rinsed his hair. He squirted some of the content of the shampoo bottle onto his palm and began to massage Alaska's scalp until foamy, white bubbles that smelt like berries began to appear all over her hair. He massaged her scalp with his fingers and in the process, he felt her body begin to relax and her eyes gently began to close.

"You know," she started, "you should be the Winter Massage Therapist instead of the Winter Soldier," she mused. He continued to massage her scalp as he rinsed her hair.

She opened her eyes afterwards only to see him looking down at her. He handed her the soap. "It's your turn," he told her as he turned around, his broad back faced as she began to gently rub the soap on his skin.

Some time later, when the hot water eventually ran out, both left the shower after they took longer than anticipated. They got themselves dressed and ate in the living room while Bucky continued his attempts to repair the broken toaster and Alaska was busy searching for a good show to watch on the TV. She settled for one particular channel that was showing the news. What caught her attention was the quick update about Captain America leaving the hospital after making a full recovery from the injury he acquired from the hands of the Winter Soldier. She wasn't the only one who watched and listened to the news update closely, Bucky paid close attention to the news as well and was relieved to learn that Steve Rogers was okay.

"Tell me what you remember about him," Alaska requested when the news update ended.

"Everything is in there," he nodded towards the 'Bucky Wall' that she had created for him consisting of written records of his memories, old and new newspaper articles about both James Buchanan Barnes and the Winter Soldier and the people associated with both these individuals.

"I know they are but I want to hear it from your mouth. Who is Steve Rogers to Bucky?" she inquired as she reached forward to tuck a few strands of his overgrown hair behind his ear.

He placed the broken toaster on the coffee table and turned to look at her, his blue eyes immediately landed on her deep brown eyes and somehow, he felt better. "We grew up together. He was this scrawny kid and I was always there to protect him because the kids always bullied him. He was always sick and I would always bring him the work he had missed at school. I would dare him to do things and Steve, being Steve, would always be up for it. We were inseparable. He was a brother to me. " he paused. "He's a good kid. I always wanted to protect him, like how I wanted to protect my little sister, Rebecca because they were always belittled and treated badly by other kids. When they turned him into Captain America, he no longer needed me to protect him. We fought in the war against Hydra together," he smiled, looking very proud as he recalled what he remembered. "Then we lost we other, I fell off that train," his smile faltered and then faded. She reached for his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. "He still remembers me. When I was first sent to eliminate him, he saw my face and he recognised me. He called me Bucky and it triggered some of my memories but Hydra knew what happened and they fried my brain to make me forget but I remember now."

She wrapped her arms around him and embraced him tightly. She wished she could take away the pain but all she could do was embrace him and hope it would ease the pain. "We've done so much to fill the Bucky Wall," she informed his as she released him from her embrace. She approached the Bucky Wall and looked at the numerous papers they have stuck to the wall. "We uncovered so many information to piece together who you were and you have been remembering so much. Maybe we could meet up with Steve Rogers. He might be able to help us with this puzzle."

She turned to look at him, waiting for his response. He avoided her gaze and sat stiffly on his seat. "Steve Rogers was a very prominent part of your life, Bucky, he will be more than willing to help us and he probably have better access to information that we don't have access to. He'll be a great help," she continued to persuade him.

"No," Bucky declined. He looked at her and saw the hopefulness in her eyes diminish. He knew that she was hopeful that he would agree to her offer to meet up with Steve. "I'm not ready yet, Alaska," he told her, the troubled look returned on his face as she rushed to his side to give him one of her comforting hugs. "I was responsible for his injuries. I don't think I'm ready to see him," he claimed. However, deep down, he also felt like he didn't deserve to see Steve Rogers just yet. He didn't tell her that and decided to keep it to himself.

"Alright," she kissed his cheek, "take your time, we won't rush things. I was only suggesting but we won't be meeting Steve Rogers and asking for his help until you're ready to see him again."

He held one of her hands and brought it to his lips, gently kissing her knuckle. "Thank you, Alaska. Thank you for being here for me."

She smiled. "I just want to complete this puzzle with you, Bucky," she told him, "I want to help you complete you."

 


	14. Chapter 14

_"Good morning, soldier," spoke a man in Russian._

_"Ready to comply," he responded back in the same language as it felt natural, as if he had been speaking this foreign language for many years of his life._

_"I have a mission for you," continued the man as he threw a folder towards his way, his fast reflexes enabled Bucky to catch it with ease using his metal left hand. He opened the folder only to see ten different photographs of ten different people. "These traitors have betrayed Hydra and sold information to the enemy. Your mission is to eliminate these traitors. No witnesses..."_

Sweaty and panting heavily, Bucky woke up alone in bed with no sign of Alaska. Although he had just woken up from his slumber, he felt more exhausted than refreshed. He noticed the time as he weakly trudged out of the bedroom. She would be back soon. He found himself standing in front of her bookshelf a few minutes later and shakily, he picked up one of the picture frames in the shelf. He looked down at the photograph blankly. It was a photograph of Alaska and her father. She was just a girl when the photograph was taken, she looked very youthful and she had her familiar, large, happy smile on her face. She was on a husky man's back. The husky man was her father and Bucky knew because she had told him plenty of things about her beloved father. The man had the same smile as her and although the photograph was old and slightly faded, he could tell that the man didn't have the same pair of brown eyes as her, instead, he had a pair of blue eyes. He knew those blue eyes. He remembered those eyes…the troubled eyes Alaska told him about...eyes that were similar to his own.

_"I'm guessing they sent you here to kill me," spoke the burly blue eyed man who fled the Soviet after betraying Hydra under the alias Seth Talley. His real name was in fact Mikhail Talanov, a man who gained enhanced abilities after being the subject of one of Hydra's experiments. "I'm also guessing you killed the other squealers," the burly man continued._

_He had nowhere to go. In fact, it was him who led the Winter Soldier into the rooftop of the tall building as soon as he sensed that he was being followed. The files from the Winter Soldier's mission only revealed that Talanov, along with nine other people, betrayed Hydra. The brief information about Talanov in the file revealed that his enhanced abilities include the ability to freeze things and turn them into solid ice._

_"I've been waiting for them to send someone to kill me for years," Talanov continued to talk as he sat tiredly on the ledge. He looked like a very exhausted man, not only physically but it seemed that he was also mentally exhausted. However, the soldier didn't care about that He was there for a mission. "You're more than welcome to fulfill your mission but I'm only asking one thing from you. I want you to leave my daughter out of this. I have been a terrible father to her but that's only because I don't know how to be a father. I wish I learned how to, I tried to but what Hydra did to me made it impossible. Hydra turned me into the creature that I am today. I'm not human, I'm not normal and for that, I cannot be there for her. She's my world. You can end my life but please, do not destroy my world."_

_The soldier approached his mission. They both knew what he was about to do but the burly man did not even made any attempt to move or even fight for his life. He had surrendered and he was ready to accept death with open arms. The mission stated that he needed to eliminate Talanov for betraying Hydra. Now, he must fulfill that mission for Hydra._

_He stopped in front of the burly man seated on the rooftop ledge before extending his metal arm. Swiftly, he pushed the man's heavy body._

_"Thank you," those were Talanov's last words before he had fallen off the tall building and the Winter Soldier completed his mission._

* * *

When Alaska got home after a tiring evening at work, she instantly found Bucky in the corner of room. Instantly, she rushed to his side. There was something terribly alarming about the sight before her. Bucky was on the ground, crying quietly as if all his hope had been sucked out of him. It wasn't the most alarming thing. The thing that shocked Alaska was the sight of him angrily hurting himself by continually hitting his metal arm with his right hand.

"Bucky," she called him, the sound of her voice didn't made him stop. It was when she reached forward and held back his right hand that he finally managed to stop. "What's wrong? Tell me what's wrong," she asked him as he looked at her with fear in his eyes. There was no pain, just fear and it made her sick with worry. "Please tell me what's wrong."

He didn't say anything, instead, he yanked his right hand free from her grasp and buried his face in his hands. Worried and clueless, Alaska wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tightly, knowing that it was all she could offer him. "Remember to breath," she reminded him quietly," remember to do Amelia's breathing technique to slow down your heart rate, it will calm you down."

She knew he followed her words when she felt his shoulders move after each deep breaths. "Do you feel better? Or are you still going to be punching your right arm if I let you go?" she asked.

"I killed him," she heard him murmur, "I-I k-killed him."

"Shh," she comforted him. "You know what, Amelia's breathing technique isn't helping this situation. Why don't you come with me, I have a better solution." She got up and forced him up, dragging him out of the apartment until he finally complied and followed her to her car.

Several minutes later, after dropping by at a grocery store and picking up a bag of apples, Alaska drove to an abandoned carpark. She left Bucky standing towards the front of the car while she opened the boot of her car where she retrieved a baseball bat. She returned to his side and handed him the baseball bat which he awkwardly accepted. "You might be wondering what the hell we're doing in the middle of an abandoned parking lot with a bag of apples and a baseball bat," she began as she picked up an apple from the bag. "This is my sort of therapy. When I was younger, it was a lot harder to hide my weird freezing ability when I get emotional, especially when I'm angry. My Dad took me here when I was six, he handed me a baseball bat and began throwing things at me. I was meant to hit and smash them with the bat as a way to defuse my anger. I always thought it was helpful. So we should try it with you. Are you ready, Bucky?"

Before he could reply, she threw an apple at him and Bucky's fast reflexes reacted quickly. He smashed the apple with the bat and before he could recover, he sensed another one coming his way. For some time, she threw apples at him and he had been hitting and smashing them until there was no apple left to throw and destroy. Eventually, they found themselves lying down together on the hood of her car while they both stared up at the sky. He felt better but only a little. The guilt he felt was weighing him down more than ever. He felt guilty, he felt terrible and above all, he was afraid of what this new memory would cost him.

"Alaska," he spoke her name quietly as he sat up. She too sat up and looked at him with a soft smile on her face while she gently brushed away the strands of hair off his face.

He held her hand and pressed it against his face. Her hand was warm but he was almost certain it would turn ice cold as soon as he tell her his upcoming revelation. As much as he wanted to keep the memory to himself, he knew she has to know. She has the right to know. He cannot live with her with his guilt weighing him down, he had to get it out. It was part of solving the puzzle, admitting his crimes and facing the consequences for it.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm sorry, Alaska. I'm sorry-…"

"No, no, Bucky, there's nothing to be sorry about. Tell me what's bothering you. What's wrong?" she tried to find his eyes and gaze upon it to see the emotion within them but he refused to look at her as if he was fearful to.

"A few years ago, they sent me on a mission to eliminate ten people who betrayed Hydra. One of them was a man named Mikhail Talanov. He gained enhanced abilities after being a part of Hydra's experiments. He had the ability to turn things into ice. After he betrayed Hydra, he fled to the United States and took a new identity as Seth Talley," he told her quietly as he felt her hand slip away from his grasp. "I was sent to kill him. He was my mission and I completed that mission successfully with no witnesses as planned. I pushed him off a building and made it look like it was suicide."

He almost wished that he didn't turn his head and saw her. There she was with her hands covering her mouth, her eyes were wide and he knew that her tears threatened to fall at any moment. He knew she was heartbroken. He can almost feel it. The fact that he was the one who had broken her heart made him both angry and sad. "I'm sorry," he uttered before he got off his seat and ran away without looking back.

 


	15. Chapter 15

For hours, Alaska had been driving all over the city, searching for one particular person. It was like searching for a needle in a haystack, the task was arduous. She was no longer sure why she was even bothered to search for him. She was meant to be angry. She was meant to hate him. She was her father's killer. However, rather than feeling hateful, Alaska pitied her father's killer. Hydra had stripped him of his humanity. Not only did Hydra turned Bucky into a weapon but also a slave. While under Hydra's command, he had no control of his body. He may have killed the people he killed as the Winter Soldier, including her father but Hydra controlled his mind when he had murdered the countless people that Hydra ordered him to. If she had someone to blame for her father's death, it was Hydra. It was wrong if she blamed Bucky for it. Would a person blame the gun that killed their loved one? The answer would be no. Instead, they would blame the person wielding the gun. Bucky was the gun and Hydra was the wielder. He was their weapon of death.

Eventually, she found herself driving to one particular place. She had been searching for hours and she had been fruitless. In a last attempt to locate him, she visited the place where they first met. Upon arriving at the building that served as her workplace for years and as the last place where her father spent his remaining moments, Alaska entered one of the elevators and pressed the button that would take her to the rooftop. As the elevator climbed up, she crossed her fingers and prayed silently that she would finally find him.

The moment the elevator door opened, she stepped out hastily and looked around the rooftop. She found a person sitting on the ledge and a sense of relief took over her. She was almost irritated with herself. Why did she waste all those hours burning gas and driving all over the city when she should've gone to the rooftop first. "Bucky," she called him as she hastily walked towards him. He didn't move and in each second that passed as she walked towards him, she worried that he would fall off the ledge or worse, jump off. "Bucky please get off the ledge and come over here," she pleaded as she grabbed the back of his arm, pulling it towards her.

"This is where he was sitting when I pushed him," he said quietly. He refused to look at her or follow her request, instead, he stayed where he was as Alaska tried to pull him off the ledge and towards her with all her might.

"Bucky please, get off the ledge," she begged when she realised that he would not move and the task was impossible, especially with him being a lot bigger than her. "You're scaring me, please, come here."

"Your father," he started, "he was talking about you before he died. He begged me not to kill you. He said you were his world."

Upon hearing this further revelation, Alaska froze. "W-why didn't you kill me back then?" she began to ask quietly, curious to know why.

"You weren't my mission," came his simple response.

He closed his eyes and inhaled the air as he felt her tight embrace from behind. He could hear her quiet sobs, his trained ears made it easy for him too. Somehow, he felt like it was a priority to comfort her. There was something about Alaska hurt and crying that was very painful for him. "Why did you come here?" he asked her, a part of him was angry that she was around because he felt like his meagre presence was hurting her more, he was her father's killer after all. "I don't deserve you, Alaska."

She sniffed as she felt Bucky comply to her earlier request. He moved off the ledge with her in his arms. "I was worried about you," she murmured against his chest as he released her from his grasp. "I don't blame you for my Dad's death, Bucky. You were manipulated by Hydra, you were controlled and you didn't have a choice. You were a victim too-…"

"But I did it," he told her quietly and she saw the broken man behind his blue eyes. Alaska realised in that very moment that Bucky had been living with the guilt ever since he started remembering everything. He did not just feel guilty for killing her father, he also feel the same for each and every person that suffered in the hands of the Winter Soldier. His guilt was eating him away and weighing him down. It pained her to see him suffer. If she could, she would make him forget every single face of the Winter Soldier's victims that must haunt Bucky Barnes everywhere he go ever since he started remembering, unfortunately, making people forget was not her superpower.

"I know that but you weren't really yourself," she comforted him, "look, if it makes you feel better, even just a little, then I forgive you. I can never be mad at you or hate you, Bucky, because I think I love you, a lot," she threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly. She held him for a couple of minutes before she felt him wrap his arms around her, finally responding back to her.

"You don't want me to disappear?" he asked as she felt him bury his face against the curve of her neck, his soft breaths tickled her skin along with his stubble.

"No, why would I want that?" she exclaimed. "We still have a puzzle to finish and we still have to get married one day and go to Romania for our honeymoon. Do you promise to do all that with me?"

He held her tighter in his arms as his body relaxed against her. He truly believed that she would leave him after his revelation but he had underestimated her dedication to him. "I promise." He released her and relocated his hands to cup her face while he gazed down at her doe brown eyes. He thought about what she said minutes ago. She said she loved him. He thought he didn't deserve such a thing, especially from someone like Alaska but at the same time, he felt greedy and he wanted all her love for himself. "I don't really remember caring for someone as much as I care for you, Alaska," he admitted. "I hate seeing you upset and hurt and I enjoy seeing you smile. I think I love you too." She smiled up at him and before she could say anything, he pressed his lips against hers and silenced her. In the middle of the rooftop where they first met, they kissed. They were just two people who believed that they were in love. Two people whose paths crossed because of destiny.

"I realised something about our puzzle," Alaska exclaimed after breaking the kiss. "You're not Bucky Barnes anymore," she told him, "and you're not the Winter Soldier anymore."

"Then who am I?" he asked with a small smile on his face. "Let me guess, am I Alaska's man, if that is still the term people use nowadays."

She blushed. "Well of course you're my man!" she exclaimed, "but apart from that, you're both Bucky and the Winter Soldier, you lived your life as both in the past and the point of our Bucky Wall is to rebuild the puzzle that you call your life so that you can live your present as someone new who learned from his past," she told him. He furrowed his eyebrows, attempting to understand her. She sighed and decided to elaborate her point. "When we complete the puzzle and piece together your past as both the Bucky Barnes and the Winter Soldier then it will help you rebuild your life in the present because you will know about your past identities which will define your present identity. Am I making sense now or am I blabbering on and on again?"

He cupped her cheek and smiled down at her. "No, what matters the most for me is that I have you with me."

"Of course I'll be with you and if ever I'm not, like if I'm in the toilet for example, then you can always find me here," she pointed at his chest, "and here," she pointed at his head, "in case you miss me too much."

She drove home afterwards with Bucky sitting on the passenger seat, watching her quietly. It was quiet for some time until Bucky decided to finally break the silence and tell her something he had been itching to tell her. "Your father, he thanked me when I pushed him." He looked at her face, watching it and waiting for her reaction. She stopped at a red light and glanced at him, forcing a weak smile on her face.

"Do you remember when I told you that you two have the same troubled eyes?" she recounted, "the pain in your eyes when you were standing on the ledge the first time we met, it was the same pain that I saw in my Dad's life all my life. He hated his inhuman ability and he tried his hardest to train me to hide mine so that I would suffer less. People are afraid of what they don't understand, Bucky, and people had been cruel to my Dad because of his inhuman ability. He didn't want me to go through the same pain. When I was growing up, I'd often find my Dad attempting to end his life, he drank some bleach once and overdosed in some sort of pill. We moved a lot when I was a kid before we finally settled in the Pink Palace. One time, before we moved to the Pink Palace, I finally realised why my Dad had been trying to kill himself when I overheard some men tease him and call him a murderer and a circus freak, out of anger, my Dad froze those people, he turned them into ice and killed them in the process. I witnessed him dispose those bodies in secret and he seem to know what he was doing. I realised then that they weren't the first group of people who bullied him and died from doing so. My Dad was losing control of his inhuman ability and he no longer want to live with the guilt. I did nothing and I was stupid for it. That's why when you came into my life, I knew then that I have to make a difference, for my Dad."

"I'm grateful that you found me, Alaska, I really am," Bucky told her as she reached for one of his hands resting on his lap while her other hand controlled the stirring wheel.

"I am too, Bucky."

 


	16. Chapter 16

It had been raining relentlessly over the last couple of hours and the rain continued to pour by the time Alaska finished her early evening shift at around seven in the evening after swapping her late shift with a co-worker. Eager to get home quickly, Alaska left work, clad in her raincoat as she battled the rain. It was a Saturday night and the city's nightlife was very much alive and unaffected by the rain. Alaska walked home hastily, occasionally walking past crowded restaurants and bars as well as groups of people headed to different destinations to enjoy the cold, wet evening. She couldn't help but wonder what Bucky must be up to. When she left him, he was in her bed, or their bed. Ever since they have been sharing it lately, he had been occupied reading Dracula after her recommendation.

Her thoughts about Bucky was cut short when she caught something from the corner of her eyes, something dark. Curiously, she glanced over her shoulder only to see nothing out of the ordinary. There was a man dressed in a business suit, holding a black umbrella and busy talking to someone on the phone behind her. Behind the man were a group of men who seemed like they were headed to one of the nearby bars. She brushed off whatever it was that caught her attention and continued to walk home.

A few minutes passed and she just couldn't shake the feeling that she was being followed. To make herself feel better and assure herself that her inkling was wrong, she glanced over her shoulder one more time only to see the same people from earlier still behind her. It was a little strange, she thought. She had walked past the last bar and the group of men who appeared to be ready to party, should've gone to one of the bars she had walked past. Perhaps they were going to a house party, she assured herself as she neared the quiet street where she was almost mugged before if Bucky wasn't around to help her.

Deciding to go with her instinct despite her earlier assurance to herself that she wasn't being followed, she avoided the quiet street and took a different path, crossing the road and going back to the busy street where she came from. As soon as she caught sight of a taxi, Alaska hopped in. She wouldn't mind paying a few bucks as long as she could get home quickly and safely. A few minutes later, the taxi stopped in front of the Pearl Palace and Alaska hastily paid and got out before rushing inside the building.

As soon as she stepped inside her apartment, Alaska was instantly greeted with the loud beeping of her fire alarm and the thick amount of smoke coming from her kitchen. She had forgotten her strange experience going home as well as her intention to tell Bucky that she felt like she was being followed. Instead, she was suddenly busy attempting to turn the fire alarm off while the culprit was busy attempting to clear the thick smoke that surrounded her kitchen. By the time she managed to silence the fire alarm, most of the smoke had cleared and she gave Bucky a look that demanded an explanation.

He looked sheepish as he pointed at the pot on the stove. "I took care of dinner," he told her, "and I, uh, burnt it."

She couldn't help but smile as she looked at him. Now that the commotion in the kitchen was over, she was finally able to evaluate her surroundings. There was a pile of mess in the sink and several splatters of whatever it was that he had been cooking were all over the wall behind the stove. Bucky himself was a mess. His hair was tousled and his shirt and face were stained with what looked like some sort of white sauce. She approached him, stopping to pick up a tea towel before she cleaned his face. "You don't have to slave yourself away in the kitchen," she told him with a chuckle.

"I wanted to," he told her. "I remembered the mac 'n' cheese that my Mom used to make when I was a kid. They were all we can afford during the Great Depression and it used to be my favorite. I was trying to make them but it obviously didn't worked out very well for me," he looked sheepish as he looked at his burnt creation.

She smiled at him, it was the first time Bucky had craved to eat something in particular and she wanted it to be grand and special. "I'll make you some mac 'n' cheese, it might not be as good as your Mom's but I'll try my best," she offered.

A few minutes later and she was busy making the dish he'd been craving. He would ask her if she needed his help and she would allow him to help by asking him to do little things. The task didn't take very long and in a matter of minutes, they were sitting on the sofa with their respective plates of mac 'n' cheese. Alaska watched Bucky as he tasted her creation for the first time. She was nervous that her mac 'n' cheese wouldn't be as good as his Mom's so a sense of relief took over her when she saw him smile after his first taste.

"It's amazing," he claimed. She blushed.

"Thank you."

"It's nice, isn't it?" Bucky asked.

"What is?" she wondered.

"Everything about this," replied Bucky quietly. "A simple life like this...I couldn't ask for more." He watched her as she nodded her head with a smile on her face. He glanced at the Bucky Wall awaiting competition then back at Alaska's smiling face. He began to wonder that perhaps he no longer have to solve the puzzle... that perhaps he can start new. He hasn't really been working very hard recently in search for information that would piece together his identity as both James Buchanan Barnes and the Winter Soldier, instead, he had been slacking off and spending numerous amount of time with Alaska who had also been distracted by his company and their intimate relationship. Perhaps it was time to move on. Perhaps he could move on with Alaska by his side and leave behind the puzzle she was so eager to piece together with him for him.


	17. Chapter 17

It had been raining relentlessly over the last couple of hours and the rain continued to pour by the time Alaska finished her early evening shift at around seven in the evening after swapping her late shift with a co-worker. Eager to get home quickly, Alaska left work, clad in her raincoat as she battled the rain. It was a Saturday night and the city's nightlife was very much alive and unaffected by the rain. Alaska walked home hastily, occasionally walking past crowded restaurants and bars as well as groups of people headed to different destinations to enjoy the cold, wet evening. She couldn't help but wonder what Bucky must be up to. When she left him, he was in her bed, or their bed. Ever since they have been sharing it lately, he had been occupied reading Dracula after her recommendation.

Her thoughts about Bucky was cut short when she caught something from the corner of her eyes, something dark. Curiously, she glanced over her shoulder only to see nothing out of the ordinary. There was a man dressed in a business suit, holding a black umbrella and busy talking to someone on the phone behind her. Behind the man were a group of men who seemed like they were headed to one of the nearby bars. She brushed off whatever it was that caught her attention and continued to walk home.

A few minutes passed and she just couldn't shake the feeling that she was being followed. To make herself feel better and assure herself that her inkling was wrong, she glanced over her shoulder one more time only to see the same people from earlier still behind her. It was a little strange, she thought. She had walked past the last bar and the group of men who appeared to be ready to party, should've gone to one of the bars she had walked past. Perhaps they were going to a house party, she assured herself as she neared the quiet street where she was almost mugged before if Bucky wasn't around to help her.

Deciding to go with her instinct despite her earlier assurance to herself that she wasn't being followed, she avoided the quiet street and took a different path, crossing the road and going back to the busy street where she came from. As soon as she caught sight of a taxi, Alaska hopped in. She wouldn't mind paying a few bucks as long as she could get home quickly and safely. A few minutes later, the taxi stopped in front of the Pearl Palace and Alaska hastily paid and got out before rushing inside the building.

As soon as she stepped inside her apartment, Alaska was instantly greeted with the loud beeping of her fire alarm and the thick amount of smoke coming from her kitchen. She had forgotten her strange experience going home as well as her intention to tell Bucky that she felt like she was being followed. Instead, she was suddenly busy attempting to turn the fire alarm off while the culprit was busy attempting to clear the thick smoke that surrounded her kitchen. By the time she managed to silence the fire alarm, most of the smoke had cleared and she gave Bucky a look that demanded an explanation.

He looked sheepish as he pointed at the pot on the stove. "I took care of dinner," he told her, "and I, uh, burnt it."

She couldn't help but smile as she looked at him. Now that the commotion in the kitchen was over, she was finally able to evaluate her surroundings. There was a pile of mess in the sink and several splatters of whatever it was that he had been cooking were all over the wall behind the stove. Bucky himself was a mess. His hair was tousled and his shirt and face were stained with what looked like some sort of white sauce. She approached him, stopping to pick up a tea towel before she cleaned his face. "You don't have to slave yourself away in the kitchen," she told him with a chuckle.

"I wanted to," he told her. "I remembered the mac 'n' cheese that my Mom used to make when I was a kid. They were all we can afford during the Great Depression and it used to be my favorite. I was trying to make them but it obviously didn't worked out very well for me," he looked sheepish as he looked at his burnt creation.

She smiled at him, it was the first time Bucky had craved to eat something in particular and she wanted it to be grand and special. "I'll make you some mac 'n' cheese, it might not be as good as your Mom's but I'll try my best," she offered.

A few minutes later and she was busy making the dish he'd been craving. He would ask her if she needed his help and she would allow him to help by asking him to do little things. The task didn't take very long and in a matter of minutes, they were sitting on the sofa with their respective plates of mac 'n' cheese. Alaska watched Bucky as he tasted her creation for the first time. She was nervous that her mac 'n' cheese wouldn't be as good as his Mom's so a sense of relief took over her when she saw him smile after his first taste.

"It's amazing," he claimed. She blushed.

"Thank you."

"It's nice, isn't it?" Bucky asked.

"What is?" she wondered.

"Everything about this," replied Bucky quietly. "A simple life like this...I couldn't ask for more." He watched her as she nodded her head with a smile on her face. He glanced at the Bucky Wall awaiting competition then back at Alaska's smiling face. He began to wonder that perhaps he no longer have to solve the puzzle... that perhaps he can start new. He hasn't really been working very hard recently in search for information that would piece together his identity as both James Buchanan Barnes and the Winter Soldier, instead, he had been slacking off and spending numerous amount of time with Alaska who had also been distracted by his company and their intimate relationship. Perhaps it was time to move on. Perhaps he could move on with Alaska by his side and leave behind the puzzle she was so eager to piece together with him for him.

* * *

**omg guys, there aren't many chapters left :( so i hope you all enjoyed this chapter and the remaining for coming up**

**stay tuned for more :)**


	18. Chapter 18

"I'm going to work, I'll be back in a few hours," murmured a familiar voice as Bucky sleepily cracked his eyes open. He saw Alaska's smiling face above his' and he felt her lips against the tip of his nose. "I'll see you later, go back to sleep," she said like she always does before she leaves for work.

He held her back before she could walk away and pulled her towards him. "I'll see you later, Alaska," he told her as he pressed his lips against her. The kiss was sweet and short and by the time she walked out of the room, sleep had taken over Bucky once more.

He was surrounded by her familiar scent as he lay in their bed, satisfied and content with his current life.

* * *

_There was pain everywhere. His head was throbbing as if someone was continually hitting his head with a metal hammer. With his limbs restrained, he had nowhere to go and no matter how much he violently struggled, he was stuck. "Longing," spoke a voice in Russian, "rusted..."_

_"No, please, no!" he screamed but it only made the pain worse._

_"Seventeen," continued the voice. "Daybreak."_

_"NO!" he let out an agonised scream._

_"Furnace._ _Nine. Benign. Homecoming. One. Freight Car…"_

Bucky opened his bloodshot eyes tiredly. The nightmares had returned and he found himself getting up from the bed covered in sweat. The morning daylight crept inside the room as he trudged to the bathroom where he splashed some cold water on his face. There was no sign of Alaska anywhere in the apartment when he stepped outside the bathroom. It was rather odd. She should've finished her shift hours ago given the fact that the sun has fully risen by now. He needed her. He felt so alone after that nightmare that all he wanted was her company.

He waited for her as patiently as he possibly could as the hours ticked by. By noon, he grew suspicious. By one in the afternoon, he began to worry. She should've gotten home hours ago. He thought that it was very out of character of her to leave him alone for so long without warning him beforehand whether verbally or with a note. Eventually, the impatient Bucky found himself leaving the Pearl Palace with the only place he could think of. Perhaps Willis could help him.

He walked to Willis' house, following the way he recalled Alaska had taken during the times they have visited Willis and Amelia. On foot, the journey took longer than Bucky anticipated. It took him several minutes before he entered a familiar looking neighborhood and spotted a familiar house. He instantly took notice that Alaska's car was nowhere in sight, informing him that she was not at Willis's house. However, he still tried his luck.

It was Willis who opened the door. Willis looked different from the last time Bucky remembered. He was still dressed in his pajamas and his eyes were red and swollen. Bucky began to wonder whether he came at the wrong time. The sad looking man patted Bucky's shoulder and sniffled. "Bucky, I'm sorry, I'm very sorry-…"

"What are you talking about?" frowning, he asked. He was confused by Willis' words. What was he sorry for?

"It's Lassie," said Willis, "haven't you heard what happened? It's all over the news," Willis exclaimed sadly. "She was involved in a car accident-…" the rest of Willis' words were muffled as Bucky stood frozen in his spot.

All Bucky thought of was Alaska, his sweet, caring Alaska with her contagious smile and warm brown eyes. "Where is she?" he demanded, there was something wild about his eyes as if he was a man who had gotten unhinged.

Willis shook his head as tears streamed down his face. "I'm sorry, Bucky. Her car fell off the Arlington Memorial Bridge. They are still trying to recover her car from the Potomac River for the past couple of hours. There were several other cars. It was a big accident and the police said it was impossible for anyone involved to survive the accident judging by the damage. It had been raining earlier and the road was darn slippery-…"

All the emotions Bucky felt came rushing to him all at once and it left him feeling completely numb. He ignored the rest of Willis's words and fled. "Bucky!" Willis called out as Bucky briskly walked away, not wanting to hear anymore.

Behind Willis, Amelia asked who he had been talking to. She had just been talking to the police after inquiring for any updates. "It was Bucky, he was pretty upset, he didn't know," Willis told his wife sadly as he wiped his tears. Amelia hugged him as a way of comforting her husband.

"The police recovered her car," Amelia informed her husband, "but they didn't find a body," she continued as hope glimmered within Willis's eyes. "They think that she managed to get out of the car but they believe she was unable to swim back to shore and drowned. They're looking for the body now. I'm sorry, Willis, I know she means a lot to you."

* * *

Bucky felt the hot tears that streamed down his face as he ran through the busy street with no destination in mind. She was gone. Last night, she left him with his home cooked dinner like she always does and kissed the tip of his nose before she left the house. If only he knew that her life would be in danger as soon as she stepped out of the door, he wouldn't have let her leave his side. She was with him less than twenty-four hours ago…why would she be taken from him now, so prematurely?

He ran and ran as tears poured down from his eyes and they left a hot, wet trail down his cheeks. His nose was runny but he simply wiped it with the back of his hand as he continued to run. It was so very unfair, he thought. Eventually, he found himself standing on the very same ledge where she had first found him. When she first found him on the ledge, he was seconds away from jumping because he thought he didn't deserve to live anymore. He cannot take the pain anymore when she found him but she talked him out of it. Now she was gone. As he stood on the ledge, he was secretly hoping that she would pop out somewhere like their first encounter in the rooftop but as he waited, she didn't appear. It only proved that she was truly gone.

He wanted to jump. Every cell in his body craved to end his misery by jumping. What did he do for destiny to be so cruel to him? First, destiny led Hydra to him and made Hydra turn him into a monster. Now, destiny had taken the woman he thought he was in love with, his lifesaver. He was not willing to live anymore and continue trying to remember his forgotten memories, especially when half of his forgotten memories were very painful and horrible memories of the Winter Soldier. He was not willing to go on alone with nobody. With her gone, he had nobody and he felt absolutely alone. It was the exact same feeling he felt when he left Steve Rogers after rescuing him from the Potomac River. Steve Rogers was his mission and he just failed his mission by rescuing him and he felt so alone knowing he had nowhere to go after he failed Hydra. It was almost odd that it was the same river that took Alaska's life.

He was no longer so alone when Alaska found him. He recalled the memories they shared together for the short amount of time they were together. She made him so happy and content with his life. Before she came along, he didn't know how to be happy. Hydra had stripped him off his happiness. He remembered the many times he would wake up after his nightmares and she would be by his side with a glass of water. He remembered the Bucky Wall and her efforts to complete the puzzle. The puzzle was his identity and she wanted to restore it for him because she cared for him, because she loved him.

He sniffed as he backed out of his suicidal plan. He found himself walking out of the building and walking to the familiar way leading to the Pearl Palace, their home. She wanted him to restore James Buchanan Barnes's memories and the Winter Soldier's memories so that he can learn from his past two identities to carve out his present identity. If he attempt to commit suicide now, that would mean he'd failed her. That would mean that all her efforts to help him solve the puzzle and rebuild his present identity had failed. He cannot fail her. He didn't want all her efforts to go to waste. He didn't want to disappoint her.

* * *

**hey everyone, i wanna apologize for this twist if you found it disappointing**

**also, i wanna apologize for my super duper late update**


	19. Chapter 19

When Bucky returned to the Pearl Palace, he quickly gathered everything on the Bucky Wall and stuffed them in a backpack along with the clothes Alaska had purchased for him. He knew it will only be a matter of time before her mother or the authority invades her apartment and he had to get out and slip away like a ghost. Before leaving her apartment, he took a few things belonging to her such as some of her photographs and her perfume. He was afraid he would forget her and he took as much things as he could belonging to her to remind him of her. Eventually, he slipped out of her apartment just in time, beating the authority.

With nowhere to go, he settled down at an empty park that evening. He held a photograph of them together in his hands. It was taken during Amelia's birthday party. It was their only photograph together. She was smiling widely and so was he. He had his arm around her and they looked like every other couple. They were so happy the night the photograph was taken. They just shared their first kiss and he danced the night away with her. He didn't want to believe that she was gone. A part of him refused to believe it. He could still smell her scent on his clothes and it only made him feel sadder.

The following day, he decided to pay Willis and Amelia another visit but their house was empty and their car was gone when he got to their house. The next-door neighbour, who saw him informed him that Willis and Amelia were attending their friend's funeral. He knew exactly whose funeral they were attending.

Eventually, Bucky found himself in the cemetery. He watched on from a distance as a small group of people gathered around while a casket was being lowered to the ground. He recognised Willis, Amelia, Alaska's mother and her mother's boyfriend. The others, he didn't recognize and he assumed that they must be her co-workers and acquaintances given the fact that she never really considered anybody else her friends other than him, Willis and possibly Amelia. There was a lump in his throat the whole time while he watched. He couldn't bring himself to step a little closer.

Bucky truly thought that he was going to marry her. He thought that once they complete the puzzle and he was able to truly restore his identity, he could live a normal life and have her as his wife, as his life-long companion. In fact, at one point, he was tempted to just give up and start a whole new life with her. Destiny, however, had other plans but he wouldn't let destiny prevail. Alaska wanted him to restore his memories and regain his identity and he will achieve that for her. He wouldn't let her efforts go to waste.

He walked away from the cemetery with a backpack full of the information he had gathered so far. The puzzle was nowhere near completion but if it wasn't for her, he wouldn't even be able to start assembling the puzzle pieces together so he owed her, he owed her a lot and he won't disappoint her.

If only Bucky approached the funeral and stayed longer, he would've learned that the casket was empty and Alaska Talley's body was never found.

* * *

A familiar blonde man stepped out of the car, looking fully recovered from his injuries. In fact, it looked like he was never hurt in the first place. Another person stepped out of the car, a red-haired woman. From a distance, Bucky watched them as they stepped inside the apartment complex while carrying heavy-looking grocery bags. He could hear the woman saying something about 'Cap' being crippled so badly that he was unable to take care of his own groceries. He recognized them both. They were supposed to be his mission…he was meant to eliminate them for Hydra. However, he was no longer Hydra's pawn and the reason he found himself stalking Steve Rogers was because of Alaska.

She had continually stressed the fact that Steve Rogers played a big role in his life as Bucky Barnes and that there was a possibility that he would be willing to help Bucky. However, he felt hesitant. It was the reason why he hasn't showed himself to Steve Rogers at all during the past week that he had been stalking him. A part of him wanted to be closer to Steve, to talk to him and to tell him he was sorry for almost killing him. However, another part of him was very much unsure whether he deserved Steve's forgiveness after he tried to kill him, after he killed his friend, Fury, and after he had forgotten him. As well as that, a little part of him was afraid that Steve would not accept him.

He retreated and eventually, Bucky found himself in the park where he had been spending his nights ever since Alaska's death. He decided that he still wasn't ready to face Steve Rogers just yet, he needed to complete the puzzle first and fix himself so that whether Steve decides to forgive him or take him to jail to face the consequence of his crimes, he would be ready.

A few days ago, after visiting Alaska's grave, Bucky paid the Pearl Palace a visit only to find a group of Hydra's agents snooping around the place. He had a violent confrontation with them and managed to get away easily with every single Hydra goon that confronted him dead. He knew then that they sensed his trail. He was almost relieved that Alaska was no longer around to feel Hydra's presence beginning to lurk back into his life. He also knew that the authorities were still searching for him to pay for his crimes. He needed to get away for a little while until he solves the puzzle like how Alaska wanted. He needed somewhere to lay low…somewhere far, far away.

Bucky unzipped his bag and took out a book he had been reading over and over again for the past few days. It was Alaska's favourite book, Dracula. He turned to a particular page that he had saved using his' and Alaska's photograph as bookmark. Romania…he recalled as he read the description of Dracula's castle. Alaska was very fascinated by it and dreamt of seeing Dracula's castle in Romania. He looked around his surroundings rather cautiously as he shove the book back in his bag. It looked like Alaska had thought of a safe place for him without knowing he would need one someday.

* * *

In another part of the country away from where Bucky was, three men dressed in white laboratory coats pushed a hospital bed containing a motionless body. As they pushed the bed, they walked past one cubicle after another containing patients who had suffered so severely that the life in their eyes had diminished since their early days in the facility. The patients looked on, watching the men push the hospital bed. They were aware that the scientists who had made their lives a living hell has acquired a new body to study.

The men wheeling the bed entered one room and the men began to attach all sorts of apparatuses to the motionless body of the woman. A man standing in the corner of the room watched on, he held a clipboard in his hand with all details about her condition. "Careful boys, this one's precious," he said, recalling how much her mother was paid in exchange for her body.

He read the information on the clipboard. Alaska Talley, that was her name. He smirked upon recognising her last name. Talley…several years ago, he read something about another Talley and the man had one of the most fascinating mutations indeed. She was his daughter and it was highly likely that she had the same mutation as her late father. Since her father was gone and since he wanted to learn more about such fascinating mutation, he had to get her. Her mother made the deal easy of course as soon as money got involved. They just had to orchestrate her death and make her disappear. Anyway, he knew plenty of people would pay way more than the amount of money he paid her mother for her once he fully uncovers her mutation and he'd have triple the income, or maybe more.

"What are you going to do with her now, Ajax?" asked one of the men.

He smiled. "Oh, a lot of things."

* * *

**well, that's it guys, it's the end.**

**i just wanna make it clear that this story isn't really meant to have a happy and complete ending where bucky and alaska end up having their little happy ending together...i wrote this story to fill in the gap that might have happened between Winter Soldier (movie) and Civil War (movie) based on my imagination. Alaska's character was only there to push Bucky and inspire him to never give up despite his predicament.**

**if the ending disappointed you guys, i apologize, my only intention when i wrote this story was to show what bucky had been up to after the Winter Soldier movie (based on my imagination of course ).**

**anyways, i hope you all enjoyed this story**

_**also, let me know if you guys would like an epilogue which involves mainly alaska and a very special guest (*hint hint* it's someone who looks like an avocado had sex with an older avocado and his name rhymes with 'too cool')** _


	20. Epilogue

_Unbearable, throbbing, horrific pain. That was all she felt as she squirmed in the uncomfortable bed she had been strapped into for the past several hours. The tears stung and burned her eyes and she tried very hard not to cry because it was very painful to. She could smell nothing but the scent of burnt flesh…cooked human flesh…and it was coming from her body._

_"Psst," someone called. It came from the cubicle next door and the only thing that separated her cubicle and the cubicle next door was a plastic curtain riddled with dirt. "Hey, Lassie, are you awake?" asked the voice from the cubicle next door._

_She squinted her eyes in hopes that it would help her see better but her vision had been blurry since she had woken up with a throbbing head. "Lassie?" she asked, "who the hell is that?"_

_"Fuck Lassie," said the voice, "I think they electrocuted you a little too hard. They probably fried your fucking brain pretty bad!" exclaimed the voice. "Oh and you are Lassie by the way. Alaska, that's your name. And I'm Wade, remember?"_

_"No," she groaned, unsure whether to trust the voice._

_"Goddamnit Lassie, how can you forget someone as spectacular as me? It's Wade, Wade Wilson!" exclaimed the voice, "I mean, it's completely fine for you to forget who you are and all that jazz since you're not really pretty awesome but it's unacceptable that you managed to forget about me too! I mean, how the hell can anybody forget about me!"_

She opened her eyes tiredly and stared blankly at the ceiling decorated with glow in the dark planet stickers. Wiping the sweat off her forehead, she sighed to herself. Wade had put the stickers there a couple of weeks ago. According to him, her room needed a bit of flare and apparently the glow in the dark stickers will solve the problem. She rolled her eyes at his childishness. She crawled out of bed and noticed that it was only five in the morning. Knowing that she won't be able to sleep any more, she trudged to the living room and switched the TV on.

It wasn't long ago when she escaped the place that has become her personal hell. She wouldn't have been able to escape if it wasn't for Wade Wilson, the only friend she made in the facility where they were tortured and experimented with by sadistic scientists. It was during one of those torturous and sadistic experiments when she lost her memories and according to Wade, he suspected that they 'electrocuted her way too hard that it fried her brain as a result'…those were his exact words. As a result, she relied heavily on Wade to help her remember. They have been friends during her early days in the facility. They were roommates since they were literally only separated from one another by a curtain. Before she lost her memories, they would spend hours talking to each other when they were not being studied and experimented with. He told her how he ended up in the facility. Cancer and love brought him there. Meanwhile, according to Wade, she had told him that her mother had sold her and he reminded her about it when she lost her memories. In fact, he reminded her about the forgotten things she had shared with him. He was like the talking diary that any people with amnesia would need. He had no problem whatsoever blabbering on for hours about the things he knew about her to fill in her empty identity. She owed Wade a lot.

Wade was the reason why they were both able to leave the facility after it had been engulfed in flames which Wade also caused by the way. The explosion and the smoke that followed knocked her unconscious and while she was out cold, Wade battled the man who made their lives a living hell…a man named Ajax, a sadistic mad scientist. When she finally woke up that evening, everything was surrounded with flames and her mutation proved itself useful when she managed to freeze the entire place, stopping the fire. She found Wade easily. She thought he was dead at first given the fact that he had been impaled with a metal bar but not only was she taken off guard by the fact that he was still alive but he was also healing very fast from the injury he had. They left their personal hell that horrible evening.

Fast forward to the present day, she found herself living in an apartment with Wade, his girlfriend, Vanessa, and a blind old lady they affectionately call Blind Al who also happened to be their landlady. They met her in a Laundromat. At first, Wade didn't appreciate Lassie trailing after him like a lost puppy but that was exactly what she was, she was lost and all she had was him. She had no memory of her family or any other loved ones for that matter. In fact, she had no idea where in DC she used to live before and Wade himself had no idea too. She had to help Wade take down Ajax and take back Vanessa in order for him to finally agree to let her 'tag along' with him. He called her his sidekick…she was Robin and he was Batman. It was that sort of thing. For that reason, they worked together ever since. Despite his so-called 'superpowers' or in other words, his mutation, he refused to accept the offer to join the X-men, a group consisting of people like them or mutants. Since she was loyal to him and he was the only friend she truly trusted, she also refused the offer to join the X-men and instead, worked with Wade who took the persona of Deadpool.

Deadpool worked as a mercenary and that was how he earned his money and paid for his rent. He was a skilled mercenary who had no problem killing those who deserved death. Meanwhile, she worked as his getaway driveway and that was how she earned her income. He had trained her how to use the katana, in fact, he had given her one which he had stolen from a Japanese restaurant but unlike Wade, she cannot bring herself to conduct the kill. That job was for Deadpool who had no problem doing it. When she's not working as his getaway driver, Lassie spent most of her time with Blind Al and occasionally with Vanessa. The three were the only people she truly trusted in the world. While they know that they cannot help her too much when it comes to retrieving her lost memories, they were more than happy to create new ones with her and she was very grateful to have them in her life.

* * *

The smell of breakfast eventually brought the residents of the apartment to the kitchen at around six in the morning. Lassie was the cook and she had no problem being responsible doing such chore. Food, whether she was eating or making it, always made her feel good. It was a typical day in the household, everyone were gobbling down their breakfast with Wade eating majority of the food while ocassionally tricking Blind Al into giving him half of the things on her plate. The TV was on, as usual, due to Blind Al's request. She always liked to listen to the news and often, Wade would play tricks on her by putting the TV on mute. It just so happened that he was in the mood to troll Blind Al because not only was he stealing some of the food on her plate but he had also put the TV on mute and hid the remote. No matter how many times Vanessa told him to stop it, he would not stop being a troll and Lassie merely shook her head at his silliness. She always wondered how Blind Al tolerated him. In fact, she admired Blind Al's patience with all of them, they would be homeless if the old woman wasn't so kind.

"Why do you like listening to the news anyway? Don't you get tired to listening to all the bad news they talk about because I most certainly am!" exclaimed Wade that morning as he cut off Blind Al who was muttering something about Wade being an annoying, ungrateful little shit.

"It's better than listening to the shit that comes out of your mouth," muttered the old lady. Vanessa giggled at Blind Al's response along with Lassie.

"Here, Blind Al, go listen to your news," said Vanessa as she retrieved the remote from Wade. The older woman muttered a simple 'thanks' and reached for the remote with Lassie's assistance. Knowing where the unmute button was through touch, Blind Al successfully unmuted the TV.

The morning news was talking about the bombing of the Vienna International Centre. "…security footage reveal that the notorious Winter Soldier was responsible for the bombing…" spoke the news anchor. The security footage was shown on TV side by side with a picture of the Winter Soldier as the World War II soldier, James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes with his name captioned underneath the picture.

Sitting next to Blind Al, Lassie stared at the picture very hard. "I know that man," she exclaimed almost hysterically as she stood up from her seat. She approached the TV, stopping in front of it to have a better view of the picture. "I know him," she exclaimed. It was the happiest and most relieved that she'd ever felt since escaping from Ajax's wrath with Wade.

As she faced her companions, she noticed that everyone looked very confused, except Blind Al who looked the same. "Oh really," challenged Wade, "you gotta be living underneath a rock if you don't know who that dude is," he claimed.

"No, no," exclaimed Alaska. "I know him, as in I personally know him," she said confidently.

Wade folded his arms across his chest. "So you remember him?"

The smile on Lassie's face faltered. "No," she said, "but I know his face, I've seen him before-…"

"Duh, you've seen him in the news!" clarified Wade.

"No, you don't understand, I feel like I knew him, I know I've seen his face somewhere and it's not from the news," she argued.

"Sure, whatever you say," exclaimed Wade, clearly unconvinced.

However, when he learned that Lassie wasn't washing the dishes after breakfast like she normally does and he discovered her in her bedroom, stuffing a backpack with clothes, he was left stumped. "What the hell are you doing?" he demanded.

"I'm going to Vienna," she replied simply, "I need to see this guy, maybe he can give me some answers."

"You're being an idiot," sighed Wade as he collapsed on her bed. Clearly between the two of them, he was the one with more sense. Francis may have damaged his skin cells but in Lassie's case, he had damaged her brain cells as far as Wade was concerned.

"I need to fill in the void, Wade. You don't understand because it didn't happen to you. I need to find answers. I need to know who I am and this guy might be my key," she reasoned out.

"How about me? Am I not the key? I freaking told you your name when you woke up without a single memory!" exclaimed Wade, feigning his surprise at her words.

"And I thank you for that but reminding me what my name is doesn't automatically make you the 'key' unless I told you something in the past that you still haven't reminded me," she claimed.

"Well," hesitantly, Wade started, "you did mention a boyfriend called Bucky," he admitted. She paused and glared at him. Wade's eyes followed her every movement as she reached for her backpack and threw it at him. He didn't even move, he knew he deserved to be hit with her bag. "All you ever told me was his name, I didn't think it was that important," explained Wade.

"You're an asshole, Wade, the king of all assholes," she muttered, clearly vexed.

"Well there are a million people called Bucky in the world, I didn't know that the dude with the metal arm is  _your_  Bucky," he claimed. "Look, I'm man enough to say I'm sorry so will you please let go of my neck, it's starting to feel a little chilly and the last thing I need is for you to freeze my freakin neck."

She didn't even realise that she was in the process of strangling him and possibly freezing his neck. Quickly, she released him and collapsed on the bed next to him. "I need to find him. I need him."

"I know," sighed Wade.

"I'll pay you a dollar if you come with me and help me track this guy down," she offered him, opening one eye to glance his way.

"$2 along with your unicorn slippers and you got a deal," replied Wade.

She sighed, she loved her unicorn slippers. "Fine, it's a deal. Pack your bags, we're going to Vienna."

* * *

**well guys, that's it!  
**

**anyway, i hope you enjoyed this story and it's been a pleasure writing this story for all of you :)**


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